GeForce GTX 970 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 680, which has clock speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform a bit faster than 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 is a little bit (more or less 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.