GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580, which has a clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 80496 (72%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be just a bit (approximately 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (approximately 130%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20928 (130%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.