GeForce GTX 260 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which comes with a core clock speed of 924 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15888 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is quite a bit (more or less 101%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37056 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is much (more or less 175%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28224 (175%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.