GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980, which has a clock speed of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 8782 (184%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (more or less 37%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 870M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38736 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit (about 219%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 870M, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49480 (219%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.