GeForce GTS 450 vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 97%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (approximately 196%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24528 (196%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.