GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980, which features a clock frequency of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 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 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 will be 250% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (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 (about 88%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.