GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 5623 (296%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be 3% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 2496 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (about 157%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45120 (157%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22752 (105%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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