GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

The GeForce GTX 480 features a GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 924 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with a clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1002 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 48 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 480 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 580 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 480	GeForce GTX 580
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	March 2010	November 2010
Code Name	GF100	GF110
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
Memory	1536 MB	1536 MB
Core Speed	700 MHz	772 MHz
Shader Speed	1401 MHz	1544 MHz
Memory Speed	924 MHz	1002 MHz
Unified Shaders	480	512
Texture Mapping Units	60	64
Render Output Units	48	48
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	384-bit	384-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	250 watts	244 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	177408 MB/sec	192384 MB/sec
Texel Rate	42000 Mtexels/sec	49408 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	33600 Mpixels/sec	37056 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.