GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should be 67% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (more or less 31%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11608 (31%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15456 (72%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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