GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 16704 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be a bit (about 4%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.