GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7770, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 164 Watts (205%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120384 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 24%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9408 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21056 (132%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.