GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this specific card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 50688 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a little bit (about 3%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1248 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 92%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (92%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.