GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

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 460		2557 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 660 (35%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be 14% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12096 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 is quite a bit (more or less 31%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (approximately 33%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (33%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved 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. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.