GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is 17% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 16704 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be a bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.