GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 167% quicker than the Radeon HD 7770 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (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 much (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

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be quite a bit (about 132%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7770, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.