In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB are very slightly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition.

The GTX 970 has a 39 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 980, but the GTX 980 has 24 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 970. As a result, the GTX 980 exhibits a 22.9 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GTX 970. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 970 has a 39 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 980, but the GTX 980 has 8 more Render Output Units than the GTX 970. As a result, the GTX 980 exhibits a 6.9 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GTX 970. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

Both the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 980 4GB were released at the same time, so are likely to be quite similar.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 980 4GB have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The memory bandwidth of the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 980 4GB are the same, which means the GTX 970 and the GTX 980 have equal limitations when it comes to graphical data transfer.

The GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition has 1664 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 980 4GB has 2048. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 2959 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3362. The GTX 980 having 403 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 980 delivers a noticeably smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 970.

The GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition requires 150 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 980 4GB requires 165 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 970 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980. The GTX 980 requires 15 Watts more than the GTX 970 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GTX 980 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the GTX 970.