GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all of 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 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is 120% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 53696 (120%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 256MB is just a bit (more or less 17%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (17%)

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 GT 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (125%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.