GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 590, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 855 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 3030 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 150912 (85%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be a lot (about 85%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35696 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be much (approximately 73%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 480, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24672 (73%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 video card 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.