GeForce GTX 970M vs Geforce GTX 680

Intro

Compare that to the Geforce GTX 680, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1006 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1502 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, 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 680		7650 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 130 (2%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (160%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 680 is 100% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96256 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 is quite a bit (about 74%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54848 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the Geforce GTX 680, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (38%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported 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. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.