GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 570

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 570, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 732 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 950 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also is made up of 480 SPUs, 60 Texture Address Units, and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 570		219 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 570 should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 10304 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a little bit (more or less 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 570. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4240 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (about 52%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10016 (52%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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