GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should perform much 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 quite a bit (approximately 62%) better at texture filtering 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is the winner, by a large margin. (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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.