GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a clock speed of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 256 Watts (105%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be 233% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 447616 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (approximately 625%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 308928 (625%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is superior to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 93248 (252%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.