GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which features GPU core speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 107 (1%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 960 should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be a small bit (about 2%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1792 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8288 (23%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.