GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1002 MHz on this specific card. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 129024 (204%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 101%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24784 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26796 (261%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 the graphics card could 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 colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.