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GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

The GeForce GTX 960 makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which features core clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 980 13552 points
GeForce GTX 960 7627 points
Difference: 5925 (78%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960 154 Sol/s
Difference: 254 (165%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960 11 Mh/s
Difference: 9 (82%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960 120 Watts
GeForce GTX 980 165 Watts
Difference: 45 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980 is 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960 112000 MB/sec
Difference: 112000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (about 100%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960 72128 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 72000 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit (more or less 100%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 960, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960 36064 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 36000 (100%)

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

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GeForce GTX 960

Amazon.com

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GeForce GTX 980

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 960 GeForce GTX 980
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year January 2015 September 2014
Code Name GM206 GM204-400
Memory 2048 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1127 MHz 1126 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 7000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 120 watts 165 watts
Bandwidth 112000 MB/sec 224000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 72128 Mtexels/sec 144128 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 36064 Mpixels/sec 72064 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1024 2048
Texture Mapping Units 64 128
Render Output Units 32 64
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2940 million 5200 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 12.0 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 960

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTX 980

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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