GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 48 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 984 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 950 should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9728 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (more or less 50%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24768 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the GeForce GTX 950, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11584 (35%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.