GeForce GTX 960 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with GPU core speed of 1006 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1502 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 680		7650 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 23 (0%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 will be 72% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80256 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is a lot (more or less 79%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56640 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be just a bit (more or less 12%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Geforce GTX 680, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (12%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.