GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1026 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, 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 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (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

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (about 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.