GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which has core 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 should theoretically be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (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

If using a high 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		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.