NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 369.00

$ 510.85 significantly less expensive

$ 879.85

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

2494 points

10% slightly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

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

47 FPS

52 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

41 FPS

6 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

36 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

33 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Clouds frame rate

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3647 points

4376 points

19% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

289.94 points

367.38 points

26% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

25908 points

29848 points

15% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

13595 points

15163 points

11% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29153 points

33463 points

14% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

34107 points

41306 points

21% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

13595 points

15163 points

11% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29277 points

34611 points

18% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

32348 points

38178 points

18% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

1126 MHz

7% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

1216 MHz

3% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

Identical

4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

Identical

256 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

Identical

224.4 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

13% slightly lower TDP

165 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

77.82 Gigapixels/s

17% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

155.6 Gigatexels/s

27% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

4.98 TFLOPS

27% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

2048

23% slightly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

128

23% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

14% slightly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

177th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

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

GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce GTX 980 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 980 beats the GeForce GTX 970 in gaming performance.

The GeForce GTX 980 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 980 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed. The boost clock speed is the frequency that the GPU core can reach if the temperature is low enough. The allows for higher performance in certain scenarios.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. Lots of memory is good when playing at high resolutions or with many monitors.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 970 has a slightly lower TDP at 145 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 970.