Quadro FX 580 vs Tesla K20c

Place in the ranking	490	1250
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.37	0.01
Power efficiency	2.73	0.72
Architecture	Kepler (2012−2018)	Tesla (2006−2010)
GPU code name	GK110	G96C
Market segment	Workstation	Workstation
Release date	12 November 2012 (12 years ago)	9 April 2009 (15 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$3,199	$199

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Tesla K20c has 3600% better value for money than FX 580.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	2496	32
Core clock speed	706 MHz	450 MHz
Number of transistors	7,080 million	314 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	55 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	225 Watt	40 Watt
Texture fill rate	146.8	7.200
Floating-point processing power	3.524 TFLOPS	0.072 TFLOPS
ROPs	40	8
TMUs	208	16

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16
Length	267 mm	198 mm
Width	2-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin	None

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Maximum RAM amount	5 GB	512 MB
Memory bus width	320 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	1300 MHz	800 MHz
Memory bandwidth	208.0 GB/s	25.6 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors

No outputs

1x DVI, 2x DisplayPort

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (11_0)	11.1 (10_0)
Shader Model	5.1	4.0
OpenGL	4.6	3.3
OpenCL	1.2	1.1
Vulkan	1.1.126	N/A
CUDA	3.5	1.1

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	8.95	0.42
Recency	12 November 2012	9 April 2009
Maximum RAM amount	5 GB	512 MB
Chip lithography	28 nm	55 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	225 Watt	40 Watt

Tesla K20c has a 2031% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 3 years, a 900% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 96.4% more advanced lithography process.

FX 580, on the other hand, has 462.5% lower power consumption.

The Tesla K20c is our recommended choice as it beats the Quadro FX 580 in performance tests.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.