NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs Intel UHD Graphics 617 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 is a high end desktop graphics card based on the Maxwell architecture. As the faster GTX 980, the GTX 970 uses the GM204 chip, but with reduced shaders (2048 vs. 1664) and TMUs (128 vs 103). The graphics card is equipped with 4 GB GDDR5 (7 GHz effective). 3.5 GB of the 4 GB are connected with 224 Bit, the rest only with a 32 Bit interface. This can lead to some stuttering or reduced frame rates in games that use the full 4 GB. The similar named mobile GeForce GTX 970M is clearly slower as it features only 1280 shader cores.

Despite the unique memory configuration, the GTX 970 performs on average on par with the older GeForce GTX 780 Ti or a AMD Radeon R9 290X.

The GM204 supports CUDA, 3D Vision, PhysX, GeForce Experience, Surround, GameStream, GPU Boost 2.0, Adaptive Vertical Sync / G-SYNC, SLI, DSR, MFAA and Virtual Reality latency improvements.

The Maxwell architecture is very power efficient. While gaming, the card only uses as much power as the Radeon R9 285 which is more than 35% slower on average.

Intel UHD Graphics 617

The Intel UHD Graphics 617 (GT2) is a low-end integrated graphics unit, which can be found in the Y-series of the Amber-Lake generation. This "GT2" version offers 24 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at up to 1050 MHz (depending on the CPU model). Due to its lack of dedicated graphics memory or eDRAM cache, the UHD 617 has to access the main memory (2x 64bit DDR3L/LPDDR3). Compared to the old HD Graphics 615 in Kaby-Lake-Y CPUs, the UHD 617 is the same GPU with slightly different clock speeds (depending on the model) and slight power/performance improvements due to the improved 14nm++ process. Compared to the similar UHD Graphics 615 in other Amber Lake models, the 617 looks to be higher clocked (+50 MHz) and has more headroom due to the higher TDP of 7 versus 5 Watt.

Performance

The 3D performance of the UHD 617 depends on the CPU model and the cooling / TDP-setting of the laptop. Furthermore, the used main memory (single channel, DDR3(L), amount) is influencing performance. On average the UHD graphics 617 should be very similar to the Kaby-Lake HD Graphics 615 due to the same architecture and similar speeds. That means that only low demanding games like Farming Simulator 17 or Rocket League are playable in lowest detail settings.

Features

The revised video engine in the HD 615 and UHD 615 / 617 now supports H.265/HEVC Main10 profile in hardware with 10 bit colors. Furthermore, Googles VP9 codec can also be hardware decoded. The UHD 617 should support HDCP 2.2 and therefore Netflix 4K. HDMI 2.0 however is still only supported with an external converter chip (LSPCon).

Power Consumption

The UHD Graphics 617 can be found in Y processors with 7 W TDP  and is therefore suited for very thin, mostly passively cooled subnotebooks like the MacBook Air 2018.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 is a mid-range graphics card for desktop PCs. It is based on the 28nm Maxwell GM206 chip and offers 768 shaders, 48 TMUs and 32 ROPs. The graphics memory is typically 2 GB GDDR5 with 6.6 GHz effective and a 128-bit interface.

As a novelty compared to the previous Maxwell GM204 chip, the GM206 includes the new VP7 video engine with HVEC (H.265) decoding and encoding. Furthermore, the GTX 950 supports HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 for 4K video output.

The 3D gaming performance of the GTX 950 is slightly better than the GeForce GTX 965M (33% more shaders but slower clock speed).