GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 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 960		7627 points
	Difference: 5925 (78%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 254 (165%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (82%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (more or less 100%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (approximately 100%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36000 (100%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.