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GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

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

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1050 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1664 Stream Processors, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970 145 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB 244 Watts
Difference: 99 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 is 16% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970 224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB 192384 MB/sec
Difference: 31616 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (about 121%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970 109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB 49408 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 59792 (121%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970 67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB 37056 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 30144 (81%)

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

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GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

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GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 580 3GB GeForce GTX 970
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year November 2010 September 2014
Code Name GF110 GM204-200
Memory 3072 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 772 MHz 1050 MHz
Memory Speed 4008 MHz 7000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 244 watts 145 watts
Bandwidth 192384 MB/sec 224000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 49408 Mtexels/sec 109200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 37056 Mpixels/sec 67200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 512 1664
Texture Mapping Units 64 104
Render Output Units 48 64
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 3000 million 5200 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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