GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5184 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is quite a bit (more or less 36%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (more or less 47%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (47%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.