GeForce GTX 950M vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1096 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 960M		4350 points
GeForce GTX 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 1020 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M will be 100% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be a bit (more or less 20%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7280 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a little bit (more or less 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 950M, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2912 (20%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.