GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 72% faster than the Radeon RX 460 2GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80384 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 24%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11632 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19616 (112%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.