GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be a lot (about 132%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38016 (132%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (55%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.