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GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this particular card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB 244 Watts
Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 67% faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB 192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot (about 65%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB 49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 19408 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB 37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 25056 (209%)

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

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GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 580 3GB Radeon HD 4870 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year November 2010 Jun 25, 2008
Code Name GF110 RV770 XT
Memory 3072 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 772 MHz 750 MHz
Memory Speed 4008 MHz 3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 244 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 192384 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 49408 Mtexels/sec 30000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 37056 Mpixels/sec 12000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 512 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 40
Render Output Units 48 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 3000 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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