GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which has a clock speed of 1096 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 179 Watts (275%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128384 (201%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a small bit (approximately 13%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19520 (111%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.