GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 89 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105984 (123%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is quite a bit (about 34%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12608 (34%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23256 (169%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.