GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is quite a bit (about 242%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72480 (242%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9960 (83%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported 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. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.