GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has a clock speed of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.