GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 960, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 5730 (302%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960 is 14% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 13504 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be a lot (approximately 150%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43328 (150%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14464 (67%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.