GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 950M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 914 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 480		3650 points
GeForce GTX 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 320 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (355%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should be 454% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 145408 (454%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be a small bit (more or less 15%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5440 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the GeForce GTX 950M, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18976 (130%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.