GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which has clock speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 7016 (107%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (100%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 253 (163%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 118272 (112%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (approximately 193%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94976 (193%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (more or less 120%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 950, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39296 (120%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.