GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs 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 memory runs at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units 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 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5184 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be much (about 36%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (more or less 47%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (47%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.