GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11608 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15456 (72%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.