NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 879.85

$ 519.99

$ 359.86 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points

97% significantly better overall score

1261 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

52 FPS

24 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

28 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS

23 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

17 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

36 FPS

16 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

19 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

33 FPS

19 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

14 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

4376 points

114% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

2038 points

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

367.38 points

89% significantly higher Blender score

194.26 points

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

29848 points

119% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

13627 points

Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

89% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Metal) score

8002 points

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points

104% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

16368 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points

152% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

16340 points

Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

Metal compute benchmark

15163 points

96% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Metal) score

7720 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points

88% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

18409 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points

111% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

18023 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz

11% slightly higher core clock speed

1006 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz

14% slightly higher boost clock speed

1058 MHz

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

16% slightly higher memory bandwidth

192.3 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

165 W

18% slightly lower TDP

195 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s

129% significantly higher pixel rate

33.86 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s

14% slightly higher texture rate

135.4 Gigatexels/s

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

4.98 TFLOPS

53% significantly better floating point performance

3.25 TFLOPS

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048

33% slightly more shading units

1536

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

Identical

128

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

100% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

177th of 586

246th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2012 March

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

11.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

GeForce GTX 980 vs GeForce GTX 680 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 980 beats the GeForce GTX 680 in gaming performance.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 980 has a slightly higher core clock speed. This is the frequency at which the graphics core is running at. While not necessarily an indicator of overall performance, this metric can be useful when comparing two GPUs based on the same architecture. 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.

As stated by the manufacturer, they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. If you're planning at playing games at high resolutions with high-quality textures, you will need a lot of memory.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 980 has a slightly lower TDP at 165 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 680 at 195 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 680.