GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 64128 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is a small bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 41%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10752 (41%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.