GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which has a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1026 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 192 SPUs, 32 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

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 speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra will be 5% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be a lot (more or less 36%) faster with regards to AF 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 reach the max fill rate.