GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs as well as 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 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12096 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is much (more or less 28%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (28%)

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 GTX, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (57%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.