GeForce GTX 1080 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 Texture Address Units 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 1080		21942 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 11075 (102%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 291 (111%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1080 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 103680 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 should be a lot (more or less 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147920 (135%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1080 is superior to the GeForce GTX 970, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35648 (53%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few 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.