GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1026 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 88 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 60480 (61%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 80%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23040 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a little bit (approximately 4%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 864 (4%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.