NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 3 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points

72% significantly better overall score

1446 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

52 FPS

22 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

30 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS

18 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

22 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

15 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

18 FPS

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

4376 points

91% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

2280 points

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

367.38 points

78% significantly higher Blender score

206.38 points

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

29848 points

63% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

18285 points

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points

67% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

20012 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points

89% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

21753 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points

78% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

19440 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points

94% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

19602 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz

21% slightly higher core clock speed

924 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz

17% slightly higher boost clock speed

1038 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

33% slightly more memory

3 GiB

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

86% significantly higher memory bandwidth

120.3 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

165 W

75 W

120% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s

56% significantly higher pixel rate

49.82 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s

87% significantly higher texture rate

83.04 Gigatexels/s

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

4.98 TFLOPS

87% significantly better floating point performance

2.66 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

238th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2014 October

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 980 vs GeForce GTX 970M specs and performance

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark, the GeForce GTX 980 GPU is faster than the GeForce GTX 970M in gaming.

Our database shows that 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 maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

As stated by the manufacturer, the GeForce GTX 980 has slightly more memory with 4 GiB of memory compared to 3 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 970M has a significantly lower TDP at 75 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 970M.