GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 129 Watts (55%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 186624 (132%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be quite a bit (about 61%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29536 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39008 (202%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.