GeForce GTX 970 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 680, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1006 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 3217 (42%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (19%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a little bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19568 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be much (more or less 109%) better at anti-aliasing than the Geforce GTX 680, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35008 (109%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.