GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which features GPU clock speed of 1120 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 Stream Processors, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 4GB should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (about 226%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111872 (226%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1216 (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 transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.