GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 6872 (103%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (121%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104320 (47%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (more or less 86%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66432 (86%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13792 (24%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.