GTX 960 vs 970 vs 980 – price and performance comparison

With the recent launch of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960, there has been a lot of comment about whether the card is good value for money, whether you should spend a bit more and get a GTX 970, or go all out and sell a kidney for a GTX 980.

Today we look at the three new GTX 900-series cards and see how they stack up against one another in terms of stats, performance, and price.

Pricing and Specifications

The table below summarises the basic specifications and price range of the cards. Bear in mind that although the GTX 970 is advertised as a 4GB card, there have been many reports about it suffering from VRAM issues. To be safe, read that stat as 3.5GB.

Card	Nvidia GeForce GTX 960	Nvidia GeForce GTX 970	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
Stream processors	1,024	1,664	2,048
Core Clock	1,127MHz	1,050MHz	1,126MHz
Boost Clock	1,178MHz	1,178MHz	1,216MHz
Memory Clock	7GHz GDDR5	7GHz DDR5	7GHz DDR5
Memory Bus Width	128 bit	256 bit	256 bit
VRAM	2GB	4GB (advertised)	4GB
Max Digital Resolution	5120 x 3200	4096 x 2160	4096 x 2160
Max VGA Resolution	2048 x 1536	2048 x 1536	2048 x 1536
Power Consumption	120W	145W	165W
Price	R2,999 – R4,000	R4,899 – R6,500	R7,599 – R11,000

Nvidia GeForce GTX 980

Performance

The hardware experts at Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry gave the GTX 980, 970, and 960 a good testing after they were released. Here are the results.

GTX 980

Game	Settings	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 – FPS
BioShock	Ultra DDOF 1920×1080	121.6
Tomb Raider	Ultimate FXAA 1920×1080	91.1
Battlefield 4	Ultra 1920×1080	87.2
Crysis 3	Very High 1920×1080	77
Crysis 3	FXAA High Quality 3840×2160	36.4
Metro: Last Light	High Quality 3840×2160	37.3
Metro: Last Light	High Quality 2560×1440	32.6

Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980

GTX 970

Game	Settings	Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 – FPS
BioShock	Ultra DDOF 1920×1080	111.1
Tomb Raider	Ultimate FXAA 1920×1080	81.6
Battlefield 4	Ultra 1920×1080	77.3
Crysis 3	Very High 1920×1080	70.5
Crysis 3	FXAA High Quality 3840×2160	32
Metro: Last Light	High Quality AAA 3840×2160	32.8
Metro: Last Light	High Quality SSAA 2560×1440	29.9

MSI GTX 970

GTX 960

Game	Settings	Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 – FPS
Battlefield 4	Ultra, 4 x MSAA 1920 x 1080	48.6
Crysis 3	Very High, SMAA 1920 x 1080	47
Assassin’s Creed Unity	Ultra, FXAA 1920 x 1080	43
Far Cry 4	Ultra, SMAA 1920 x 1080	50.8
COD: Advanced Warfare	Max, SMAA 1920 x 1080	86.4
Ryse: Son of Rome	High, SMAA 1920 x 1080	42.2
Shadow of Mordor	Ultra, Medium Textures, no SSAA 1920 x 1080	53.2
Tomb Raider	Ultimate, FXAA 1920 x 1080	65.7
Metro Last Light Redux	Max, no SSAA 1920 x 1080	51.5