GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that 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 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 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 480		3650 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 1753 (92%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 78912 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is a lot (more or less 46%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be quite a bit (about 56%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (56%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.