GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 772 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1002 MHz on this card. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 50688 (36%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a small bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1248 (3%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (92%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.