GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has GPU clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 48 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 2750 (58%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (more or less 43%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31472 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (about 96%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 870M, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21768 (96%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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