GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (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 just a bit (about 4%) better at texture 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 should be a lot (approximately 80%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher 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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.