GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1050 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should perform 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 is a lot (approximately 121%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce GTX 580, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.