GeForce GTX 980 vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 690, which has a clock speed of 915 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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 980		13552 points
Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
	Difference: 441 (3%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 690, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160512 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be much (about 63%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90112 (63%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13504 (23%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.