GTX 970m or a 960 for my desktop.

[jdutra]

I currently have a desktop with a i5 3570 ang gtx 650 Ti Boost. am going to get a laptop because i need one (aside from my desktop). I cant decide wether to spend around 1000 with a laptop containing a gtx 960m, and further down the road get a gtx 960 to upgrade my desktop. Or spend around 1300 dollars and just get a laptop with a gtx 970m. Please advice.

 

[Guest]

Id get the 960M laptop, then further down get a 960 or 970 for your desktop

 

[KLawinger]

You should be able to find a laptop with a 970m for around 1000 usd, then id suggest thhat if you can. If not then 960m laptop will do fine. Maybe get a 970 for your desktop once pascal drops the 900 series prices

 

[Solandri]

I have a laptop with a 970m. While it's nice, the fan gets really noisy when I'm gaming. If I had it to do over, I'd get a laptop with a mid-tier GPU like a 950m or 960m. Then a desktop with a GTX 970 or 980. Use the laptop's built-in GPU when on the road. At home I could game on the desktop or (if I wanted to game on the laptop) use something like Steam In Home Streaming to run the game on the desktop but display it on the laptop.

Also note that despite the numbering, the 970m and 980m are substantially inferior parts compared to the GTX 970. The GTX 960 uses a different core so isn't exactly comparable, but is probably about the same speed as the 970m after you factor in clock speed.

970m = 1280 shaders, 80 texture units, and 48 render units.
980m = 1536, 96, and 96 of these respectively.
GTX 970 = 1664, 104, 56, in addition to being clocked higher.
GTX 960 = 1024, 64, 32
960m = 640, 40, 16, on an older core.

https/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_900_Series
https/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_900M_.289xxM.29_Series

Why Steam In Home Streaming? Because it'll let you do crazy things like game for 8 hours on the laptop on battery (because the game is running on the desktop and for all intents and purposes the laptop is just playing a video).