GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1050 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1664 Stream Processors, 104 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation 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 590		6680 points
	Difference: 4187 (63%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104320 (47%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is quite a bit (more or less 41%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31504 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8928 (15%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.