GeForce GTX 480 vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which comes with core speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units 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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 700 (19%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 480 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 113408 (177%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be a little bit (about 4%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1840 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16064 (92%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can 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 ROPs by the clock 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.