GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is much (more or less 47%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15808 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (more or less 286%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27456 (286%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on many 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.