GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1026 MHz. It also features a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should be much 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 should be a lot (about 46%) better at anisotropic filtering 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, by far. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.