GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 590, which has GPU core speed of 607 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 855 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 4783 (252%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 249 Watts (215%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 229824 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be much (more or less 170%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48896 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be a lot (more or less 170%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36672 (170%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many 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.