GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1026 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 192 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 28096 (40%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is quite a bit (approximately 50%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (100%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.