GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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

Radeon RX 480		13349 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2482 (23%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 18 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (42%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be a lot (approximately 48%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52080 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (88%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.