GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which features a core clock frequency of 1038 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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 960		7627 points
	Difference: 1849 (24%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 1 (1%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980M should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (about 38%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (about 84%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30368 (84%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.