GeForce GTX 285 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this specific model. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		204 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 33408 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 285 1GB should be a small bit (approximately 5%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 1GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2432 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be quite a bit (about 79%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 285 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 1GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16320 (79%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.