GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 2399 (94%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105984 (123%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11608 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (approximately 129%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20856 (129%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.