GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 will be 16% quicker than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 31616 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a lot (approximately 192%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94720 (192%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35008 (94%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.