In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 EVGA Classified Kingpin ACX 2.0+ 4GB Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 Palit JetStream 2GB Edition.

The GTX 980 has a 154 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GTX 770. This results in the GTX 980 providing 19.7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 980 has a 154 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Render Output Units than the GTX 770. This results in the GTX 980 providing 46.7 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 980 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 770, and so the GTX 980 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 770.

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 GTX 980 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GTX 770, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 980 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 980 has 0.1 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 770, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 980 is marginally better than the GTX 770.

The GeForce GTX 980 EVGA Classified Kingpin ACX 2.0+ 4GB Edition has 2048 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 770 Palit JetStream 2GB Edition has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3920 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 770 is 1846. The GTX 980 having 2074 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 980 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 770.

The GeForce GTX 980 EVGA Classified Kingpin ACX 2.0+ 4GB Edition requires 165 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 770 Palit JetStream 2GB Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 770. The GTX 770 has been recommended a PSU with 50 Watts more than the GTX 980. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 770 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 980.