GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1026 MHz on this particular card. 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 GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 280 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 67%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19360 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a bit (approximately 12%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2336 (12%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.