NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 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 1060 6GB

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 879.85

$ 399.00

$ 480.85 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points

1% slightly better overall score

2457 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

52 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

47 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS

0 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

40 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

36 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

31 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

33 FPS

Identical

33 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

367.38 points

377.89 points

2% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

29848 points

34034 points

14% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

3% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

14587 points

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points

36416 points

8% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points

10% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

37241 points

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

3% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

14587 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points

36494 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points

6% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

35697 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz

1506 MHz

33% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz

1709 MHz

40% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

6 GiB

49% significantly more memory

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

165 W

120 W

37% slightly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s

82.03 Gigapixels/s

5% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s

13% slightly higher texture rate

136.7 Gigatexels/s

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

4.98 TFLOPS

23% slightly better floating point performance

4.04 TFLOPS

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048

60% significantly more shading units

1280

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

177th of 586

180th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2016 July

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 980 vs GeForce GTX 1060 6GB specs and performance

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GPU is faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in gaming.

The GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 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 6GB 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.

As stated by the manufacturer, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB has significantly more memory with 6 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB has a slightly lower TDP at 120 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 980 at 165 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 conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB over the GeForce GTX 980.