GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 speed of 1026 MHz on this card. 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 GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 12480 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be a lot (more or less 132%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38016 (132%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (55%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.