GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is 233% quicker than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (about 97%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot (approximately 196%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24528 (196%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per 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. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.