GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which features clock speeds of 1096 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 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 870M		4770 points
GeForce GTX 960M		4350 points
	Difference: 420 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (69%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 870M should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (more or less 140%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61552 (140%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is quite a bit (more or less 29%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 960M, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5048 (29%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.