GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 will be 47% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit (approximately 86%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 24%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 590, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.