GeForce GTX 980 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 680, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1006 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs 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 980		13552 points
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 5902 (77%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980		63 FPS
Geforce GTX 680		38 FPS
	Difference: 25 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a bit (about 12%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Geforce GTX 680. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39872 (124%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.