In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

The GeForce GTX 1060 has a 380 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 980, but the GTX 980 has 48 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GTX 1060. As a result, the GTX 980 exhibits a 23.6 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GeForce GTX 1060. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GTX 1060 has a 380 MHz higher core clock speed but 16 fewer Render Output Units than the GTX 980. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the GeForce GTX 1060 manages to provide 0.2 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 GeForce GTX 1060 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 980, and so the GeForce GTX 1060 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 GeForce GTX 1060 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GTX 980, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, the overall memory performance is about the same.

The GTX 980 has 32.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GTX 1060, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 980 is noticeably better than the GeForce GTX 1060.

The GeForce GTX 1060 has 1280 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition has 2048. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 1060 is 2953 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3362. The GTX 980 having 409 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 GeForce GTX 1060.

The GeForce GTX 1060 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 980. This means that the GeForce GTX 1060 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 980. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the GeForce GTX 1060 should consume less power than the GTX 980.

The GeForce GTX 1060 requires 120 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition requires 180 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the GeForce GTX 1060 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980. The GTX 980 requires 60 Watts more than the GeForce GTX 1060 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 980 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GTX 1060.