GeForce GTX 460 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

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

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, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (about 31%) faster with regards to 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce GTX 460, 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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.