GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580, which has GPU clock speed of 772 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 is 77% faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83584 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be much (approximately 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13008 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (more or less 78%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16256 (78%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.