NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5GB

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

2438 points

7% slightly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

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

47 FPS

49 FPS

2 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

39 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

0 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

31 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

32 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher Clouds frame rate

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

289.94 points

324.97 points

12% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

25908 points

30206 points

16% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29153 points

33671 points

15% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

34107 points

36656 points

7% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29277 points

35111 points

19% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32348 points

33988 points

5% 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

1709 MHz

45% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

60% significantly larger memory bus width

160 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

40% slightly higher memory bandwidth

160.2 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

68.36 Gigapixels/s

3% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

136.7 Gigatexels/s

11% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

4.38 TFLOPS

11% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

30% slightly more shading units

1280

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

30% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

40% slightly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

181st of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2017 December

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 5GB specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 1060 5GB beats the GeForce GTX 970 in gaming performance.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 1060 5GB 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 5GB 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 5GB has a slightly lower TDP at 120 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 970 at 145 W. TDP (Thermal Design Power) measures total heat output from the chip.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the GeForce GTX 1060 5GB is better than the GeForce GTX 970.