GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with a core clock speed of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2685 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 146 (56%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (about 32%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34928 (32%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (7%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 higher screen 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.