GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1026 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 13392 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be quite a bit (approximately 44%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (44%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5472 (34%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.