GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 is 56% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 55104 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is a lot (more or less 136%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (136%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (26%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.