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

The GTX 980 has a 76 MHz higher core clock speed and 24 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 970. This results in the GTX 980 providing 34.9 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 76 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Render Output Units than the GTX 970. This results in the GTX 980 providing 13.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

Both the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 970 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 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 970 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 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 970 4GB are the same, which means the GTX 980 and the GTX 970 have equal limitations when it comes to graphical data transfer.

The GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition has 2048 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 970 4GB has 1664. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3362 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 2646. The GTX 980 having 716 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 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition requires 180 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 970 4GB requires 145 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 970. The GTX 980 requires 35 Watts more than the GTX 970 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 980 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 970.