As a basis for mineral resources exploration, the results of mineral resources potential assessment would improve the economic benefits for mineral exploration. Since the 1970’s, the mineral resources potential assessments have been carried out in different countries. After 30 years of development, a series of relatively mature methods of the mineral resources potential assessment have been come into being. By digitizing a variety of geological information, mineral resources potential assessment based on GIS is able to realize quantitative identification and extraction of mineralization of information, its ultimate goal achieve delineation of the location, estimate of the number and quality of potential mineral deposits. This paper introduces several popular potential assessment of mineral resources at home and abroad, summarize method of thinking and work flow of the mineral resources potential assessment on based GIS, state several key points of mineral resources potential assessment： (classifying deposit types and indentifying areas for forecast, setting up comprehensive assessment model, delineating targets, and estimating the number of deposits and evaluating resource reserves.