GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 590, which has a clock speed of 607 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 855 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 512 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 48 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

GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 3030 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 150912 (85%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot (about 85%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35696 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (more or less 73%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 480, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24672 (73%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.