GeForce GTX 1060 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which has core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 TAUs 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.

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

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should in theory be a little bit superior to 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 should be a little bit (about 10%) better 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is a better choice, but not by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.