GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 62%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30592 (62%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a little bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (16%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.