GeForce GTX 970 vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare all of that to the Geforce GTX 690, which comes with a clock speed of 915 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2244 (21%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 155 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be 72% quicker than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160512 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be quite a bit (approximately 115%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 125040 (115%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is just a bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Geforce GTX 690, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (15%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.