GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare that to the Geforce GTX 680, which features a clock speed of 1006 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 5753 (303%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 680 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 93760 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is quite a bit (more or less 347%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99968 (347%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be quite a bit (about 49%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10592 (49%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.