GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs along with 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 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 12096 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is quite a bit (about 28%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (about 57%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTX, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (57%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.