GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 71616 (37%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (approximately 140%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68992 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7456 (25%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.