GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980, which has a clock frequency of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 11655 (614%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 125504 (127%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (about 400%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 115328 (400%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 50464 (234%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.