NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q 6 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
Comments (0)
Popular Comparisons

GPU Comparison

Quickly search and compare graphics cards

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1789 points

2494 points

39% slightly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

37 FPS

52 FPS

15 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

30 FPS

41 FPS

11 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

25 FPS

36 FPS

11 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

23 FPS

33 FPS

10 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q and the GeForce GTX 980? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Download GPU Benchmark

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3292 points

4376 points

32% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

347.28 points

367.38 points

5% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

28312 points

29848 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29934 points

33463 points

11% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32085 points

41306 points

28% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

32446 points

34611 points

6% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

29492 points

38178 points

29% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1480 MHz

31% slightly higher core clock speed

1126 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1480 MHz

21% slightly higher boost clock speed

1216 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

6 GiB

49% significantly more memory

4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

192 Bit

256 Bit

33% slightly larger memory bus width

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

192.2 GB/s

224.4 GB/s

16% slightly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

80 W

106% significantly lower TDP

165 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

71.04 Gigapixels/s

77.82 Gigapixels/s

9% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

118.4 Gigatexels/s

155.6 Gigatexels/s

31% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.79 TFLOPS

4.98 TFLOPS

31% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1280

2048

60% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

60% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

33% slightly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

222nd of 586

177th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2017 June

2014 September

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.1

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q vs GeForce GTX 980 comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark, the GeForce GTX 980 GPU is faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q in gaming.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has a slightly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q also has a slightly higher boost clock speed. This is a frequency that can be reached if the GPU is cooled sufficiently and has enough power.

Furthermore, the spec sheet for both these GPUs show that the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has significantly more memory with 6 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Lots of memory is good when playing at high resolutions or with many monitors.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q has a significantly lower TDP at 80 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 980 at 165 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 980 over the GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q.