GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1002 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

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 580		4956 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 1306 (36%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 8% faster than the GeForce GTX 480 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 14976 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be just a bit (about 18%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7408 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3456 (10%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.