NVIDIA GeForce 940M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

NVIDIA GeForce 940M

The NVIDIA GeForce 940M is a mid-range DirectX 11-compatible graphics card for laptops unveiled in March 2015. It is based on Nvidia's Maxwell architecture (GM108 chip) and manufactured in 28 nm. The 940M offers 384 shader units as well as 2 GB of DDR3 memory (64 bit, 2000 MHz effective).

Compared to the previous and technically very similar GeForce 840M, the GeForce 940M is clocked just slightly higher.

Architecture

Compared to Kepler, Maxwell has been optimized in several details to increase power efficiency. Smaller Streaming Multiprocessors (SMM) with only 128 ALUs (Kepler: 192) and an optimized scheduler should lead to better utilization of the shaders. Nvidia promises that a Maxwell SMM with 128 ALUs can offer 90 percent of the performance of a Kepler SMX with 192 ALUs. GM108 features 3 SMMs and thus 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs and 8 ROPs (64-bit interface).

Another optimization is the massively enlarged L2 cache. The larger size can process some of the memory traffic to allow for a relatively narrow memory interface without significantly reducing performance.

Similar to Fermi and Kepler, the GM107/GM108 support DirectX 12 with feature level 11_0 only.

Performance

Due to its just 5 percent higher core clock, the GeForce 940M is only marginally faster than the previous GeForce 840M and similar to the older GeForce GT 750M (DDR3 version). Many games of 2014/2015 can be played fluently in WXGA resolution (1366 x 768) and medium detail settings. However, very demanding games such as Assassin's Creed Unity will require lower resolutions and/or details.

Features

GM108 integrates the sixth generation of the PureVideo HD video engine (VP6), offering a better decoding performance for H.264 and MPEG-2 videos. Of course, VP6 supports all features of previous generations (4K support, PIP, video encoding via NVENC API). Unfortunately, HDMI 2.0 is still not supported.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce 940M should be about 30 Watts or lower. Therefore, the GPU is best suited for laptops 13 - 14 inches in size and above. The 900M series also supports Optimus to automatically switch between an integrated graphics card and the Nvidia GPU.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti is a mid-range desktop graphics card that was announced early 2014. It is based on the first generation of the Maxwell architecture, namely the GM107 chip. Maxwell sets its focus on energy efficiency and was able to outperform the predecessor Kepler and AMD chips in similar performance regions. The GTX 750 Ti supports DirectX 11.2 but only feature level 11_0.

The GeForce GTX 750 Ti is comparable to the Nvidia Geforce GTX 860M for laptops that features the same chip with slightly slower clock rates and therefore also performance.

The 3D performance lies between the Radeon R7 260X and R7 265X from AMD or between the GTX 750 and GTX 660 from Nvidia. In our tests, the 750 Ti was not able to achieve playable framerates in demanding games and highest settings in 1920x1080 (see benchmarks below).

The power consumption as already mentioned is a strong suite for the GTX 750 Ti and it excels the e.g. slightly slower Radeon R7 260X by a great margin (gaming).