GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7770, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 164 Watts (205%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7770 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120384 (167%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a lot (about 24%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9408 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21056 (132%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.