GeForce GTX 560 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1002 MHz on this specific card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 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 580		4956 points
GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
	Difference: 1926 (64%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 64256 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a small bit (approximately 9%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4048 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11136 (43%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.