GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1002 MHz on this model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 580 3GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 6970 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 580 3GB	Radeon HD 6970
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	November 2010	December 2010
Code Name	GF110	Cayman XT
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe x16
Memory	3072 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	772 MHz	880 MHz
Shader Speed	1544 MHz	(N/A) MHz
Memory Speed	1002 MHz	1375 MHz
Unified Shaders	512	1536
Texture Mapping Units	64	96
Render Output Units	48	32
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	384-bit	256-bit
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	244 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	192384 MB/sec	176000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	49408 Mtexels/sec	84480 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	37056 Mpixels/sec	28160 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number 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 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 maximum fill rate.