GeForce GTX 580 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 960, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 2671 (54%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 is 72% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80384 (72%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be much (about 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22720 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a little bit (more or less 3%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 992 (3%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.