GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1126 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 980		13552 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 8782 (184%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 870M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (more or less 37%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 870M. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38736 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (about 219%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 870M, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49480 (219%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.