In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 MSI Gaming 4GB Edition SLI are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Leadtek WinFast Hurricane 4GB Edition.

The GTX 970 has a 64 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GTX 970. This results in the GTX 970 providing 6.7 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 970 has a 64 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 970 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 970 providing 3.5 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 970 was released less than a year after the GTX 970, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

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 970 has 4096 MB more video memory than the GTX 970, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 970 also has superior memory performance overall.

The memory bandwidth of the GeForce GTX 970 MSI Gaming 4GB Edition SLI and the GeForce GTX 970 Leadtek WinFast Hurricane 4GB Edition are the same, which means the GTX 970 and the GTX 970 have equal limitations when it comes to graphical data transfer.

The GeForce GTX 970 MSI Gaming 4GB Edition SLI has 3328 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 970 Leadtek WinFast Hurricane 4GB Edition has 1664. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 5746 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 2732. The GTX 970 having 3014 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 GTX 970.

The GeForce GTX 970 MSI Gaming 4GB Edition SLI requires 296 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 970 Leadtek WinFast Hurricane 4GB Edition requires 150 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 700 Watts for the GTX 970 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 970. The GTX 970 requires 146 Watts more than the GTX 970 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 970 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 970.