GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this specific card. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs 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 GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 3503 (241%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (approximately 97%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (about 196%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24528 (196%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed 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. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.