GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2685 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 146 (56%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 32%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34928 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (7%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.