GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which features a clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 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

Radeon RX 480		13349 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2482 (23%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 18 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (42%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 should theoretically be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be much (approximately 48%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52080 (48%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (approximately 88%) better at FSAA than the Radeon RX 480, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (88%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.