GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580, which features a clock frequency of 772 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1002 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 42 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 80496 (72%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be just a bit (approximately 19%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (about 130%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20928 (130%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. 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 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.