GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 4493 (237%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 93504 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 208%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60000 (208%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (37%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.