GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 1573 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 79% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 77504 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (more or less 193%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55680 (193%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (30%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.