GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6870, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 6870		2870 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 973 (51%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 35904 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 75%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (33%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock 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 higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.