GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is 95% faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 93888 (95%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot (approximately 72%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20608 (72%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 72%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15456 (72%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.