GeForce GTX 470 vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that 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 memory. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 29 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 58464 (44%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (about 45%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15416 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 53%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 470, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12776 (53%)

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 one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.