GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 285, which features a clock speed of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16384 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be a lot (more or less 108%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53408 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit (more or less 26%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (26%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.