GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980, which has clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator 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 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, the GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit 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 should be a lot (approximately 100%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.