GeForce GTX 1050 3GB 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 clocked the core frequency 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 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

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 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (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 should be much (more or less 132%) more effective at AF 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 using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.