GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 4090

[ VERDICT ] Winner: GeForce RTX 4090 (89/100)

GeForce RTX 4090 leads overall with a score of 89/100 compared to GeForce GTX 970 (15/100), offering superior measured performance and technical specifications.

GeForce GTX 970
GeForce

GeForce GTX 970

15/100
View Full Specs →
[ WINNER ]
GeForce RTX 4090
GeForce

GeForce RTX 4090

89/100
View Full Specs →

Benchmark Performance Comparison

Normalized Lab Scores
Benchmark measurements and scores across compared devices
Benchmark GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Efficiency 10.0 Poor 43.0 Poor WINNER
Gaming 12.0 Poor 93.0 Excellent WINNER

Detailed Technical Specifications

3D Mark

3D Mark specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Fire Strike 12101 72432
Night Raid 47583 195813
Port Royal 4353 26127
Time Spy 3665 36299
Wild Life Extreme 6976 85218
Solar Bay — 187525

API

API specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
CUDA 5.2 8.9
DLSS No DLSS 3
DirectX 12 12
DisplayPort 1.2 1.4a
OpenCL 3.0 3.0
OpenGL 4.6 4.6
Ray Tracing No Yes
Vulkan 1.3 1.3

Games

Games specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
1080p High 43 255
1080p Ultra 34 217
1440p Ultra 23 177
4K Ultra 12 106
CoD: Modern Warfare III 38322115 266263219151
Counter-Strike 2 77563716 33923818890
Cyberpunk 2077 272113- 22620814366
Far Cry 6 47432913 203179170104
Forza Horizon 5 58332616 275199193155
Ghost of Tsushima 241614- 18815213791
Hogwarts Legacy 252215- 20016313274
Margin of Error Low Low
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 49442714 302284222118
The Witcher 3 46352211 292268191101

GeekBench 6 ML

GeekBench 6 ML specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Backend DirectML DirectML
Depth Estimation (Q) 12902 75599
Face Detection (HP) 7074 78111
Framework ONNX ONNX
Image Classification (SP) 1852 15600
Image Segmentation (HP) 3622 36657
Image Super Resolution (Q) 8987 48114
Machine Translation (HP) 1576 6349
Object Detection (SP) 2425 21186
Pose Estimation (Q) 43726 289639
Style Transfer (SP) 86714 601428
Text Classification (SP) 1446 4074

GeekBench 6 OpenCL

GeekBench 6 OpenCL specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
API OpenCL OpenCL
Background Blur 77.1 img/sec 318.9 img/sec
Edge Detection 2.08 Gpixels/sec 21 Gpixels/sec
Face Detection 38.1 img/sec 222.8 img/sec
Feature Matching 0.17 Gpixels/sec 2.38 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian Blur 1.85 Gpixels/sec 23.9 Gpixels/sec
Horizon Detection 1.28 Gpixels/sec 14.2 Gpixels/sec
Particle Physics 2443 FPS 48090.4 FPS
Stereo Matching 92.9 Gpixels/sec 1950 Gpixels/sec

General

General specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Architecture Maxwell 2.0 Ada Lovelace
Build Discrete Discrete
Case Desktop Desktop
GPU Codename GM204 AD102
Launch price (MSRP) $329 $1599
Purpose Gaming Gaming
Released September 19, 2014 September 20, 2022
Segment Mid-range High-end
Successor -GeForce RTX 5070 -GeForce RTX 5090
Vendor Nvidia Nvidia
Recommended CPU — -Intel Core i9 14900Kor above

Graphics Processing Unit

Graphics Processing Unit specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Base Clock 1050 MHz 2235 MHz
Boost Clock 1178 MHz 2520 MHz
Compute Units (Pipelines) 13 128
Instructions Per Cycle 2 IPC 2 IPC
L1 Cache 48KB per cluster 128KB per cluster
L2 Cache 2MB shared 72MB shared
Ray-tracing Cores No 128
Render Output Units (ROPs) 56 176
Shading Units 1664 16384
Tensor Cores No 512
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) 104 512

Memory

Memory specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Bus 256-bit 384-bit
ECC No No
Effective Memory Speed 7000 Mbps 21000 Mbps
Memory Clock 1753 MHz 2625 MHz
Memory Size 4 GB 24 GB
Memory Type GDDR5 GDDR6X

Passmark Graphics

Passmark Graphics specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
DirectX 11 71 FPS 323 FPS
DirectX 12 41 FPS 151 FPS
G2D Mark 763 1303
GPU Compute 4079 Ops/s 26022 Ops/s

Physical

Physical specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Die Size 398 mm² 609 mm²
Fabrication Process 28 nm 5 nm
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 4.0 x16
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC
TGP 148 W 450 W
Transistor Count 5 billion 76.3 billion
Transistor Density 12.56 MTr/mm² 125.29 MTr/mm²

Raw Performance

Raw Performance specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Pixel Fill Rate 66 GPixel/s 444 GPixel/s
Texture Fill Rate 123 GTexel/s 1290 GTexel/s

Recent User Tests

Recent User Tests specifications comparison
Specification GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 4090
Date — Benchmark
📘 2026-04-03(afroman420IU) — Cinebench 2024

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