GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 17% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 16704 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB is just a bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (about 80%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (80%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.