GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 960, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 947 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 245 Watts (204%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216320 (193%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a small bit (about 8%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22208 (62%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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