In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon RX 480X 8GB are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition.

The RX 480X has a 85 MHz higher core clock speed and 24 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 970. This results in the RX 480X providing 38.8 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 RX 480X has a 85 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Render Output Units than the GTX 970. This results in the RX 480X providing 14.8 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 RX 480X was released over a year more recently than the GTX 970, and so the RX 480X is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 970.

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 RX 480X has 4096 MB more video memory than the GTX 970, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, overall, the GTX 970 has superior memory performance.

The GTX 970 has 224.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the RX 480X, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 970 is massively better than the RX 480X.

The Radeon RX 480X 8GB has 2048 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition has 1664. However, the actual shader performance of the RX 480X is 2560 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 2959. The GTX 970 having 399 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 970 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the RX 480X.

The RX 480X transistor size technology is 14 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 970. This means that the RX 480X is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 970.

The Radeon RX 480X 8GB requires 150 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition requires 150 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the RX 480X and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 970. The two GPUs require the same amount of wattage to run. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.