GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 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 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 3240 (42%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 108 (70%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (73%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970 should be 100% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (about 51%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37072 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (more or less 86%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31136 (86%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.