GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1026 MHz on this particular model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 is 14% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 13392 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is a lot (about 28%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5472 (34%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.