GeForce GTX 590 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with a clock speed of 1006 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 970 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be much better than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 136064 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a lot (more or less 66%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51072 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Geforce GTX 680, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26080 (81%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.