GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that 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 made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 is 56% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is a lot (approximately 178%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and very much so. (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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.