GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 950, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1024 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1652 MHz on this specific card. It features 768 SPUs as well as 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 154 Watts (171%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 86656 (82%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a little bit (about 1%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 256 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4288 (13%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.