Yes, much much faster. The 7600GT will do about 900k characters per second (stock) or 600k at 160x60 using ter-u20b font. Last time I tested, a GTX580 does about 187k per second but that's in stock 80x25 VGA mode without a framebuffer; to get a direct framebuffer the only option I'm aware of is nouveau, and that drops the rate to about 14k per second (so only just better than the equivalent of 1FPS at 160x60, as thast's about 10k characters on screen at once).

Some of the kernel changes that are happening may well make it possible to have simple high-speed framebuffers that can be used for text consoles in the future, so there's still hope.