GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 660 Ti		6013 points
	Difference: 217 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be a lot (approximately 28%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22480 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (about 46%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10040 (46%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.