In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Edition.

The GeForce GTX 780 has a 113 MHz higher core clock speed and 132 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 570. This results in the GeForce GTX 780 providing 120.7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GTX 780 has a 113 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Render Output Units than the GTX 570. This results in the GeForce GTX 780 providing 11.4 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GTX 780 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 570, and so the GeForce GTX 780 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 570.

The GeForce GTX 780 has 1792 MB more video memory than the GTX 570, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GeForce GTX 780 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GeForce GTX 780 has 132.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 570, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GTX 780 is massively better than the GTX 570.

The GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Edition has 480 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 780 has 2304. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 570 is 720 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 780 is 2078. The GeForce GTX 780 having 1358 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GTX 780 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 570.

The GeForce GTX 780 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 570. This means that the GeForce GTX 780 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 570.

The GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Edition requires 219 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 780 requires 250 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 570 and a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GeForce GTX 780. The GeForce GTX 780 requires 31 Watts more than the GTX 570 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GeForce GTX 780 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 570.