NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs AMD Radeon RX 580

GPU Comparison Result

Below are the results of a comparison of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 and AMD Radeon RX 580 video cards based on key performance characteristics, as well as power consumption and much more.

Advantages

  • Higher Boost Clock: 1340MHz (1216MHz vs 1340MHz)
  • Larger Memory Size: 8GB (4GB vs 8GB)
  • Higher Bandwidth: 256.0 GB/s (224.4 GB/s vs 256.0 GB/s)
  • More Shading Units: 2304 (2048 vs 2304)
  • Newer Launch Date: April 2017 (September 2014 vs April 2017)

Basic

NVIDIA
Label Name
AMD
September 2014
Launch Date
April 2017
Desktop
Platform
Desktop
GeForce GTX 980
Model Name
Radeon RX 580
GeForce 900
Generation
Polaris
1127MHz
Base Clock
1257MHz
1216MHz
Boost Clock
1340MHz
PCIe 3.0 x16
Bus Interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
5,200 million
Transistors
5,700 million
-
Compute Units
36
128
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
144
TSMC
Foundry
GlobalFoundries
28 nm
Process Size
14 nm
Maxwell 2.0
Architecture
GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

4GB
Memory Size
8GB
GDDR5
Memory Type
GDDR5
256bit
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
256bit
1753MHz
Memory Clock
2000MHz
224.4 GB/s
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
256.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

77.82 GPixel/s
Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
42.88 GPixel/s
155.6 GTexel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
193.0 GTexel/s
-
FP16 (half)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.
6.175 TFLOPS
155.6 GFLOPS
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
385.9 GFLOPS
5.081 TFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
6.299 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

2048
Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
2304
48 KB (per SMM)
L1 Cache
16 KB (per CU)
2MB
L2 Cache
2MB
165W
TDP
185W
1.3
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.2
3.0
OpenCL Version
2.1
4.6
OpenGL
4.6
5.2
CUDA
-
12 (12_1)
DirectX
12 (12_0)
2x 6-pin
Power Connectors
1x 8-pin
6.4
Shader Model
6.4
64
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
32
450W
Suggested PSU
450W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps
GeForce GTX 980
18 +6%
Radeon RX 580
17
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps
GeForce GTX 980
34
Radeon RX 580
36 +6%
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps
GeForce GTX 980
63 +24%
Radeon RX 580
51
GTA 5 1440p / fps
GeForce GTX 980
61
Radeon RX 580
61
FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
GeForce GTX 980
5.081
Radeon RX 580
6.299 +24%
3DMark Time Spy
GeForce GTX 980
4250
Radeon RX 580
4451 +5%
Hashcat / H/s
GeForce GTX 980
196096
Radeon RX 580
204331 +4%