GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 980M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1038 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980M is 14% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (more or less 38%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the GeForce GTX 960, by far. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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 max fill rate.