GeForce GTX 970 vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 680, which features core clock speeds of 1006 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 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 970		10867 points
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 3217 (42%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (19%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Geforce GTX 680 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a small bit (more or less 18%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19568 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35008 (109%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.