GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all 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 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (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 is just a bit (about 15%) more effective at AF 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

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.