GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has core speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 64 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 980M		9476 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 1849 (24%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 1 (1%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M should theoretically be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (more or less 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (more or less 84%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 960, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30368 (84%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.