GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with a clock speed of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 31616 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 121%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59792 (121%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30144 (81%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.