GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which has a core clock speed of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1002 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 62 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (about 34%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12544 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce GTX 260, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.