GeForce GTS 450 1GB 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 frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this model. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 40768 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be just a bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is much (about 72%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9072 (72%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.