GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which features a clock frequency of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 107 (1%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960 is 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is just a bit (about 2%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1792 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8288 (23%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.