Compute Capability Versions (Geforce 550 Ti and 560 TI)

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

I’m having some budget constraints at the moment and was trying to decide between a 550 TI and a 560 TI.

The 550 TIs are much cheaper, so I was leaning toward them, and both 550TI/560TI of those are on 2.1.

Is there that much of a performance impact between the two models for CUDA programming? I want to pick up a graphics card with 2GB to learn CUDA, and the information online about these specific topics are a little bit sparse.

Thanks

2

The 550 Ti is roughly half as fast as the 560 Ti. I’d always go with the 560 Ti.
If your only intention is to learn CUDA, the 550 Ti should do the job just as well though.

If you can get the" GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores Limited Edition", it’s a much better deal.

3

Is the amount of memory available on the cards important? I haven’t been able to find any of the 560 TI cores with 2gb of memory, but I’m curious if this is important to CUDA in anyway.

Thanks!

4

The amount of memory needed (or desirable) depends on the problem. Even 1 gigabyte is plenty for learning CUDA (and several other tasks). I have a complex simulation software that runs well with just 512 megabytes.

EDIT: With the ever-growing memory sizes, it’s sometimes hard to tell kilo-, mega-, and gigabytes apart…

5

Thank you Tera, appreciate this!

6

I should mention I also went out and purchased the 560 TI 448 Cores after doing a lot of reading on this!