GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 1434 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (about 80%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.