GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a core clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be 5% faster than the Radeon R9 380 4G overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is a lot (about 120%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59232 (120%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6016 (19%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.