GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has core 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 1060 3GB		12185 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 4665 (62%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 100608 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 47%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34512 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 970M, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27936 (63%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 reach the max fill rate.