GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 69696 (242%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 414%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (414%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (more or less 671%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 420, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (671%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus 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 better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.