Quote Originally Posted by tajoh111 View Post
The reason the gtx 580 was amazing at the time was there was also such a huge increase in the amount of shaders compared to the old architecture.

From 24 and 8 pixel and vertex shaders respectively to 128 unified at much higher clocks too. These were real shaders too. The r600 was so disappointing because it relied on only 64, 5 way shaders and relied on a new AA scheme which relied on more shaders to do the work.
Not really... what you should have said is G80 could handle 128 threads per clock while R600 could only do 64 threads per clock.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2231/4

or if you want Derek's comparison...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2231/6