GeForce GTS 150 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 66496 (208%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be much (about 64%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (64%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (about 82%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9760 (82%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.