GeForce GTX 960M vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 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 970		10867 points
GeForce GTX 960M		4350 points
	Difference: 6517 (150%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (123%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (about 149%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65360 (149%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is much (about 283%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 960M, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49664 (283%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.