GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which comes with a clock speed of 1038 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation 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 950		6536 points
	Difference: 2940 (45%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 0 (0%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M should be 21% quicker than the GeForce GTX 950 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 22272 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (approximately 103%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50496 (103%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high 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 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33664 (103%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.