GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970M, which has GPU clock speed of 924 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 48 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 970M		7520 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 984 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 950 is 10% faster than the GeForce GTX 970M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9728 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (more or less 50%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24768 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (about 35%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 950, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11584 (35%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.