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GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB comes with a core clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (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 should be a lot (approximately 80%) better 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (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

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GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7870 XT

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 580 3GB Radeon HD 7870 XT
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year November 2010 November 2012
Code Name GF110 Tahiti LE
Memory 3072 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 772 MHz 925 MHz
Memory Speed 4008 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 244 watts 185 watts
Bandwidth 192384 MB/sec 192000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 49408 Mtexels/sec 88800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 37056 Mpixels/sec 29600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 512 1536
Texture Mapping Units 64 96
Render Output Units 48 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 3000 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7870 XT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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