GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 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 exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (more or less 43%) better at texture filtering 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 should be a lot (about 96%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 870M, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 high resolutions.

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

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