GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 1434 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 59 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 384 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39392 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot (about 25%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7456 (25%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.