In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon RX 470 4GB.

The GTX 980 has a 200 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the RX 470. This results in the GTX 980 providing 25.6 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 200 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Render Output Units than the RX 470. This results in the GTX 980 providing 42.5 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 RX 470 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 980, and so the RX 470 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 Radeon RX 470 4GB and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GTX 980 has 13.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the RX 470, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 980 is slightly better than the RX 470.

Both the Radeon RX 470 4GB and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition have 2048 Shader Processing Units. While the two GPUs have the same number of SPUs, the actual performance delivered by the GTX 980 is 3362 and by the RX 470 is 3362. Knowing that the shader performance of the GTX 980 is superior, it is not necessary to examine the GPUs' respective Texture and Pixel Fill Rates.

The RX 470 transistor size technology is 14 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 980. This means that the RX 470 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 980.

The Radeon RX 470 4GB 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 450 Watts for the RX 470 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980. The GTX 980 requires 60 Watts more than the RX 470 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 RX 470.