GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this specific model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a lot (approximately 97%) better at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTS 450, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.