GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 4187 (63%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104320 (47%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (about 41%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31504 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a small bit (about 15%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 590, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8928 (15%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.