GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		120 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		294912 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 102912 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be a lot (about 62%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		144000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55200 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is quite a bit (approximately 143%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		72000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (143%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.