GeForce GTX 870M vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 960, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 870M		4770 points
	Difference: 2857 (60%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 960 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (more or less 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33264 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 should be quite a bit (approximately 60%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 870M, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13480 (60%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.