GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with 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 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (approximately 31%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11608 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (more or less 72%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.