GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 384 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (more or less 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39392 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.