GeForce GTX 860M vs GeForce GTX 965M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 965M, which comes with core clock speeds of 944 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 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 965M		5650 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 1310 (30%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (approximately 27%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 965M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16096 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M is quite a bit (approximately 137%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17456 (137%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one 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. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.