NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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GPU Comparison

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 369.00

$ 289.00

$ 80.00 slightly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

9% slightly better overall score

2058 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

47 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

42 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

1 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

33 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

27 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

29 FPS

1 FPS slightly higher Clouds frame rate

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

289.94 points

1% slightly higher Blender score

284.61 points

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

25908 points

31922 points

23% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

13595 points

0.50% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

13527 points

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29153 points

33958 points

16% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

34107 points

0.50% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

33939 points

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

13595 points

0.50% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

13527 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29277 points

33375 points

13% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32348 points

32433 points

0.26% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

1506 MHz

43% significantly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

1708 MHz

44% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

33% slightly larger memory bus width

192 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

16% slightly higher memory bandwidth

192.2 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

120 W

20% slightly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

81.98 Gigapixels/s

24% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

123 Gigatexels/s

0.41% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

3.94 TFLOPS

0.38% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

44% significantly more shading units

1152

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

44% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

16% slightly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

206th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2016 August

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

4.6

GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 970 beats the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in gaming performance.

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB has a significantly 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 3GB also has a significantly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB has a slightly lower TDP at 120 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 970 at 145 W. This is not a measure of performance, but rather the amount of heat generated by the chip when running at its highest speed.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the GeForce GTX 970 is better than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB.