GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (approximately 62%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30592 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (16%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.