Hardware Question about GPU's

[CheatingSoi]

I built my computer a little over a year ago. I have the 4GB version of this graphics card. I don't want to upgrade right now, but sometime in the future I would like to. The thing I don't really get is, I've been comparing a lot of graphics cards that are a bit more pricey than the one I bought. I compare the specifications and they are all almost exactly the same. For instance the GTX 970 is said to be a great card, and It's over $100 more than I paid for my card. Yet the specifications seem to be identical. Is there something I'm missing? How do I find a card that actually does perform better than my own?

 

[Originality]

What specifications exactly are you comparing? The amount of VRAM it has? The GPU clock speeds? The VRAM clock speeds? The number of processing cores? Number of ROPS? The graphical bandwidth, fill rate or throughput?

To get a better idea of how graphics cards compare to each other, you can use a comparison engine like gpuboss or PassMark tables (although PassMark is known to be a bit superficial and not representative of gaming performance).

Edit: for example, running off a GPUboss comparison of the 270x and 970, I can see that the 970 has more of everything, and performs twice as well in PassMark and most games, but for some reason does significantly worse in 3DMark06 (tests dx9 performance).

 

[Duo8]

I built my computer a little over a year ago. I have the 4GB version of this graphics card. I don't want to upgrade right now, but sometime in the future I would like to. The thing I don't really get is, I've been comparing a lot of graphics cards that are a bit more pricey than the one I bought. I compare the specifications and they are all almost exactly the same. For instance the GTX 970 is said to be a great card, and It's over $100 more than I paid for my card. Yet the specifications seem to be identical. Is there something I'm missing? How do I find a card that actually does perform better than my own?

You won't see much improvements in a year, especially these days.
Come back in maybe 4 years.

 

[raystriker]

You won't see much improvements in a year, especially these days.
Come back in maybe 4 years.

I agree. There's hardly any headway in this sector.
Perhaps things would change when manufacturers start using even lower manufacturing processes coupled with newer architectures.