GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1002 MHz on this particular model. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 reach the maximum fill rate.