GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of that 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 along with 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 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is quite a bit (more or less 28%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.