GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 256 Watts (105%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 295X2 is 233% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 447616 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (approximately 625%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 308928 (625%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (more or less 252%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 93248 (252%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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