GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980, which features core clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2685 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 146 (56%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 32%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34928 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a bit (about 7%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 970, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (7%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.