In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 550M 2GB are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GT 230M.

The GT 550M has a 240 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GeForce GT 230M. This results in the GT 550M providing 3.8 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GT 550M has a 240 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce GT 230M, but the GeForce GT 230M has 4 more Render Output Units than the GT 550M. As a result, the GeForce GT 230M exhibits a 1 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GT 550M. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GT 550M was released over a year more recently than the GeForce GT 230M, and so the GT 550M is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GeForce GT 230M.

The GT 550M has 1024 MB more video memory than the GeForce GT 230M, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GT 550M also has superior memory performance overall.

The GT 550M has 3.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GT 230M, which means that the memory performance of the GT 550M is marginally better than the GeForce GT 230M.

The GeForce GT 550M 2GB has 96 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GT 230M has 48. However, the actual shader performance of the GT 550M is 142 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 230M is 53. The GT 550M having 89 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GT 550M delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GeForce GT 230M.

The GeForce GT 550M 2GB requires 35 Watts to run and the GeForce GT 230M requires 23 Watts. The GT 550M requires 12 Watts more than the GeForce GT 230M to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GT 550M to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the GeForce GT 230M.