GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which features clock speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 5136 (118%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M is 100% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (approximately 30%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23136 (30%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53680 (421%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.