GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be a lot (about 242%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72480 (242%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is much (about 83%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9960 (83%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.