GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Geforce GTX 670

Intro

Compare that to the Geforce GTX 670, which comes with GPU clock speed of 915 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1344 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should in theory be a small bit better than the Geforce GTX 670 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 384 (0%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be quite a bit (approximately 107%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53072 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7776 (27%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.