GeForce GTX 460 SE vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this particular model. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83584 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (more or less 58%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18208 (58%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16256 (78%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.