GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 33408 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB will be a little bit (about 5%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2432 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be a lot (about 79%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16320 (79%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.