GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs GeForce GTX 960M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 960M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1096 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
	Difference: 137 Watts (211%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 960M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 47888 (75%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a little bit (more or less 6%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2368 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be just a bit (about 9%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (9%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.