GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti features a core clock frequency of 822 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1002 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has GPU core speed of 772 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1002 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 512 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 48 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.