GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980, which features a core clock frequency of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 9212 (212%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (250%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 88%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67616 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 59312 (465%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, 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 AA, HDR 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.