GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 2000 MHz on this specific card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 6003 (79%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 161 (105%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 17 (155%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 580 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 150144 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is quite a bit (approximately 151%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 108880 (151%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (12%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.