- Dec 25, 2008
- 9,108
- 1,260
- 126
I received a GTX 970 recently and it's a very powerful card for $330. I was interested to see how it would do overclocked to its limit against one of my overclocked 780ti cards. I was hoping to get the 970 up to the speed of one of my 780ti cards with a hefty overclock. I run my GPUs at whatever their overclock limit is 24/7, so these results are not going to represent what everyone will experience with the same model of cards.
I'll note first off that these were not run on the same platform because my main rig is watercooled and I can't swap parts in and out as I please. Both machines are Haswell based though and both CPUs were run at 4.5Ghz. There should be little variance in benchmark performance from platform differences apart from 3DMark, in which case I am only listing the GPU scores.
Rig 1
The synthetic benches were run at their predetermined resolutions. All the game benchmarks were run at 2560x1600 and maximum settings, apart from Tomb Raider where I ran 2x SSAA rather than 4x.
GTX 780ti Firestrike - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4175494
GTX 970 Firestrike - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4176125
GTX 780ti Firestrike Extreme - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4175523
GTX 970 Firestrike Extreme - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4176238
GTX 780ti Valley - http://i.imgur.com/0XTraGh.jpg
GTX 970 Valley - http://i.imgur.com/gKVUDGU.jpg
GTX 780ti Tomb Raider - http://i.imgur.com/JGmrJkz.jpg
GTX 970 Tomb Raider - http://i.imgur.com/IMD1O68.jpg
GTX 780ti Metro 2033 Redux - http://i.imgur.com/FCfMdVJ.jpg
GTX 970 Metro 2033 Redux - http://i.imgur.com/E2PSvIV.jpg
GTX 780ti Metro Last Light - http://i.imgur.com/Hej9ePz.jpg
GTX 970 Metro Last Light - http://i.imgur.com/MowYT05.jpg
GTX 780ti Rome Total War 2 - http://i.imgur.com/S93XVg9.jpg
GTX 970 Rome Total War 2 - http://i.imgur.com/Iv2leky.jpg
Crysis 3
GTX 780ti Crysis Warhead - http://i.imgur.com/TPJgNDr.jpg
GTX 970 Crysis Warhead - http://i.imgur.com/SweaDyB.jpg
Basing it on average framerates, the 780ti is about 20% faster than the 970 here. I've started to do some benches at 1080p and the performance difference appears to get smaller at that resolution. My 780ti cards are both pretty golden, reference cards that can run 1300/8000 at the 1.21 volt limit, which is not typical for reference 780ti. Whereas 1500 core overclocks on the 970 seem pretty common. For the price the 970 is really impressive after you finish overclocking it.
The 980/970 don't provide any sort of tangible upgrade for a 780ti, but for $330 and pushing a couple sliders you can easily get gtx780ti/gtx980 stock performance out of the 970.
I'll note first off that these were not run on the same platform because my main rig is watercooled and I can't swap parts in and out as I please. Both machines are Haswell based though and both CPUs were run at 4.5Ghz. There should be little variance in benchmark performance from platform differences apart from 3DMark, in which case I am only listing the GPU scores.
Rig 1
- 5960X @ 4.5Ghz
- 16GB DDR4 2600Mhz
- GTX 780ti @ 1300 Core / 8000 Memory
- 4670K @ 4.5Ghz
- 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz
- GTX 970 @ 1506 Core / 8000 Memory
The synthetic benches were run at their predetermined resolutions. All the game benchmarks were run at 2560x1600 and maximum settings, apart from Tomb Raider where I ran 2x SSAA rather than 4x.
GTX 780ti Firestrike - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4175494
GTX 970 Firestrike - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4176125
GTX 780ti Firestrike Extreme - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4175523
GTX 970 Firestrike Extreme - http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4176238
GTX 780ti Valley - http://i.imgur.com/0XTraGh.jpg
GTX 970 Valley - http://i.imgur.com/gKVUDGU.jpg
GTX 780ti Tomb Raider - http://i.imgur.com/JGmrJkz.jpg
GTX 970 Tomb Raider - http://i.imgur.com/IMD1O68.jpg
GTX 780ti Metro 2033 Redux - http://i.imgur.com/FCfMdVJ.jpg
GTX 970 Metro 2033 Redux - http://i.imgur.com/E2PSvIV.jpg
GTX 780ti Metro Last Light - http://i.imgur.com/Hej9ePz.jpg
GTX 970 Metro Last Light - http://i.imgur.com/MowYT05.jpg
GTX 780ti Rome Total War 2 - http://i.imgur.com/S93XVg9.jpg
GTX 970 Rome Total War 2 - http://i.imgur.com/Iv2leky.jpg
Crysis 3
GTX 780ti Crysis Warhead - http://i.imgur.com/TPJgNDr.jpg
GTX 970 Crysis Warhead - http://i.imgur.com/SweaDyB.jpg
Basing it on average framerates, the 780ti is about 20% faster than the 970 here. I've started to do some benches at 1080p and the performance difference appears to get smaller at that resolution. My 780ti cards are both pretty golden, reference cards that can run 1300/8000 at the 1.21 volt limit, which is not typical for reference 780ti. Whereas 1500 core overclocks on the 970 seem pretty common. For the price the 970 is really impressive after you finish overclocking it.
The 980/970 don't provide any sort of tangible upgrade for a 780ti, but for $330 and pushing a couple sliders you can easily get gtx780ti/gtx980 stock performance out of the 970.
Last edited: