GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2763 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 53 (20%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580 should in theory perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be much (more or less 66%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71808 (66%)

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
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26976 (67%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.