GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be 71% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 40768 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a small bit (about 15%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9072 (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.