GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a lot (more or less 87%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23008 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30456 (461%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.