GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 4080

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce RTX 4080, which uses a 4 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 2205 MHz. The GDDR6X memory works at a speed of 1400 MHz on this card. It features 9728 SPUs as well as 304 TAUs and 112 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce RTX 4080		320 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (121%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 4080 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4080		734003 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 510003 (228%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4080 is quite a bit (about 514%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4080		670320 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 561120 (514%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 4080 is superior to the GeForce GTX 970, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4080		246960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 179760 (268%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.