GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units 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 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be a lot superior to 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+ should be a lot (more or less 64%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18432 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (more or less 83%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9792 (83%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high 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 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.