GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 1724 (35%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 590 will be 71% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 135936 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is much (approximately 57%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28288 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21216 (57%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.