GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960M, which comes with clock speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 171 Watts (263%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 will be 121% quicker than the GeForce GTX 960M in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 77696 (121%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be just a bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4320 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (10%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.