GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1026 MHz. It also features a 192-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 460 SE should be 10% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 10304 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE is a small bit (about 8%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (4%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.