GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of 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 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (78%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is 157% faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60096 (157%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (about 227%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (227%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (more or less 391%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 230, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (391%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.