GeForce GTX 970M vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1126 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 6032 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is much (more or less 95%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70208 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the GeForce GTX 970M, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27712 (62%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.