GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 7870		6230 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 4333 (228%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 55104 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (approximately 178%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (178%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (more or less 48%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (48%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 get to the max fill rate.