NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
vs
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X

vs

GPU Comparison Result

Below are the results of a comparison of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X video cards based on key performance characteristics, as well as power consumption and much more.

Advantages

  • Higher Bandwidth: 224.4 GB/s (224.4 GB/s vs 192.2 GB/s)
  • More Shading Units: 1664 (1664 vs 1280)
  • Higher Boost Clock: 1709MHz (1178MHz vs 1709MHz)
  • Larger Memory Size: 6GB (4GB vs 6GB)
  • Newer Launch Date: October 2018 (September 2014 vs October 2018)

Basic

NVIDIA
Label Name
NVIDIA
September 2014
Launch Date
October 2018
Desktop
Platform
Desktop
GeForce GTX 970
Model Name
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
GeForce 900
Generation
GeForce 10
1050MHz
Base Clock
1506MHz
1178MHz
Boost Clock
1709MHz
PCIe 3.0 x16
Bus Interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
5,200 million
Transistors
7,200 million
104
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
80
TSMC
Foundry
TSMC
28 nm
Process Size
16 nm
Maxwell 2.0
Architecture
Pascal

Memory Specifications

4GB
Memory Size
6GB
GDDR5
Memory Type
GDDR5X
256bit
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
192bit
1753MHz
Memory Clock
1001MHz
224.4 GB/s
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
192.2 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

65.97 GPixel/s
Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
82.03 GPixel/s
122.5 GTexel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
136.7 GTexel/s
-
FP16 (half)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.
68.36 GFLOPS
122.5 GFLOPS
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
136.7 GFLOPS
3.842 TFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
4.287 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

-
SM Count
?
Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.
10
1664
Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
1280
48 KB (per SMM)
L1 Cache
48 KB (per SM)
2MB
L2 Cache
1536KB
148W
TDP
120W
1.3
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.3
3.0
OpenCL Version
3.0
4.6
OpenGL
4.6
12 (12_1)
DirectX
12 (12_1)
5.2
CUDA
6.1
2x 6-pin
Power Connectors
1x 6-pin
6.4
Shader Model
6.4
56
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
48
300W
Suggested PSU
300W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps
GeForce GTX 970
15 +67%
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
9
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps
GeForce GTX 970
29
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
33 +14%
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps
GeForce GTX 970
41
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
50 +22%
FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
GeForce GTX 970
3.842
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
4.287 +12%
Blender
GeForce GTX 970
318
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
369 +16%
OctaneBench
GeForce GTX 970
76 +4%
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
73