GeForce GTX 295 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (99%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 295 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 224 (0%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is just a bit (about 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17040 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (about 108%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 295, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34944 (108%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per 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 number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.