GeForce GTX 560 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
	Difference: 1926 (64%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 50% quicker than the GeForce GTX 560 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 64256 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4048 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11136 (43%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.