GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which has a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 380 2G overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be a lot (approximately 120%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59232 (120%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a little bit (about 19%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380 2G, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6016 (19%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.