GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 965M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 965M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 944 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 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 965M		5650 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 1310 (30%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be much (more or less 27%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16096 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 965M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17456 (137%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.