GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 914 MHz. The DDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 950M		3330 points
	Difference: 1440 (43%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 870M should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (approximately 188%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68832 (188%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (more or less 54%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 950M, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7960 (54%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.