GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M295X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16384 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be quite a bit (approximately 94%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46592 (94%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13056 (54%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.