GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 772 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 512 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 will be 204% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 129024 (204%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is quite a bit (approximately 101%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24784 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26796 (261%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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