In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 Ti 2GB.

The GTX 980 has a 76 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 960 Ti. This results in the GTX 980 providing 43.3 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 than the GTX 960 Ti and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 980 providing 4.9 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 960 Ti was released over a year more recently than the GTX 980, and so the GTX 960 Ti is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 980.

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 960 Ti, 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 memory bandwidth of the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition and the GeForce GTX 960 Ti 2GB are the same, which means the GTX 980 and the GTX 960 Ti 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 960 Ti 2GB has 1536. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3362 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 960 Ti is 1809. The GTX 980 having 1553 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 980 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 960 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition requires 180 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 960 Ti 2GB requires 140 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980 and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the GTX 960 Ti. The GTX 980 requires 40 Watts more than the GTX 960 Ti 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 960 Ti.