GeForce GTX 980M vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare that to the Geforce GTX 690, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 915 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 690		13111 points
GeForce GTX 980M		9476 points
	Difference: 3635 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 690 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256512 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be much (about 135%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134592 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be a bit (approximately 13%) better at AA than the Geforce GTX 690, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (13%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.