GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

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 580		4956 points
	Difference: 5911 (119%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 121%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 81%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 580, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 get to the max fill rate.