GeForce 8800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134784 (234%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (about 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15808 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27456 (286%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.