GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with core speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

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 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 3180 (73%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is a little bit (approximately 4%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (approximately 248%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (248%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.