GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 16704 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be a small bit (about 4%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is much (more or less 80%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (80%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.