GeForce GTX 1060 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which features a clock speed of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1060		311 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 49 (19%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060		12359 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 1492 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 27392 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be a bit (about 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11280 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 is a small bit (more or less 8%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 970, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (8%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.