GeForce GTX 960M vs GeForce GTX 965M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 965M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 944 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 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 965M		5650 points
GeForce GTX 960M		4350 points
	Difference: 1300 (30%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M will be much (about 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16576 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 965M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (72%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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