GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

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

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 590, which has a clock frequency of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 855 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GTX 580 3GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

GeForce GTX 590 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GTX 580 3GB	GeForce GTX 590
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	November 2010	March 2011
Code Name	GF110	GF110
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16
Memory	3072 MB	1536 MB (x2)
Core Speed	772 MHz	607 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1544 MHz	1215 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	1002 MHz (4008 MHz effective)	855 MHz (3420 MHz effective) (x2)
Unified Shaders	512	512 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	64	64 (x2)
Render Output Units	48	48 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Bus Width	384-bit	384-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 11	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.1	OpenGL 4.1
Power (Max TDP)	244 watts	365 watts
Shader Model	5.0	5.0
Bandwidth	192384 MB/sec	328320 MB/sec
Texel Rate	49408 Mtexels/sec	77696 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	37056 Mpixels/sec	58272 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.