GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which has core speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 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 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 4331 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (90%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 107 (69%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 118272 (112%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (more or less 122%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60048 (122%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34432 (105%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.