GeForce GTX 880M vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with clock speeds of 924 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

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 880M		6360 points
	Difference: 1160 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 880M should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M should be quite a bit (more or less 65%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48192 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13824 (45%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.