GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which features GPU clock speed of 772 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 Stream Processors, 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 is 123% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (more or less 31%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.