GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 926 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1650 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 470 4GB is 10% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 18816 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB is much (approximately 140%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69120 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7424 (25%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.