GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 580, which features a clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2763 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 53 (20%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 580 will be 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (approximately 66%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71808 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the Radeon RX 580, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26976 (67%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.