GeForce GTX 1070 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970, which has a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1664 SPUs, 104 TAUs, and 64 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 1070		18174 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 7307 (67%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1070		436 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 174 (66%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 1070		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1070 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be a lot (more or less 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		180720 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71520 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1070 is superior to the GeForce GTX 970, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		96384 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29184 (43%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.