GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 speed of 1026 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be much (approximately 132%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38016 (132%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (55%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.