NVIDIA GeForce 945M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK and the NVIDIA GeForce 945M occupy opposite ends of the GPU landscape recorded in the database: one is a desktop flagship from the GeForce 700 generation, the other a notebook-class part from the GeForce 900M line. Both are now end-of-life, both built at TSMC on a 28 nm process, and both stem from NVIDIA's Kepler and Maxwell eras respectively. On paper and in the recorded measurements, the TITAN BLACK dominates, but the comparison is instructive because it illustrates how widely two chips of the same transistor density can diverge in design intent.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head record contains one shared test, geekbench_opencl, and it is a rout. The TITAN BLACK scored 27218 in OpenCL compute while the 945M recorded 8099, a margin of 236.1 percent in favor of the desktop card. That is not a close race; it is a categorically different class of hardware measured on the same workload. The OpenCL result lines up with the raw specification gap: 5.645 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput on the TITAN BLACK against 1,305.6 GFLOPS on the 945M, a ratio of more than four to one that the benchmark reproduces almost exactly.

Beyond the shared test, the TITAN BLACK's broader benchmark sheet reinforces the gap. Its passmark_g3d score is 9184, its passmark_gpu_compute score is 3726, and its passmark_g2d result is 595. In the older DirectX suites it posted 133 in DirectX 9, 73 in DirectX 11, 47 in DirectX 10, and 34 in DirectX 12. Its geekbench_metal result is 24172 and its geekbench_vulkan result is 29561. The 945M carries only a single recorded benchmark in the database, the OpenCL score already cited, so the comparative picture rests on that lone intersection, and it is decisive.

Context from each card's rival set sharpens the interpretation. The TITAN BLACK's average benchmark score of 9474 places it 46th percentile against all GPUs in the database, in a cluster with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (average score 9458, a 0.2 percent gap), the AMD Radeon R7 M380 (9313, 1.7 percent behind the TITAN BLACK), the NVIDIA Quadro K5000 (9637, 1.7 percent ahead), and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (9645, 1.8 percent ahead). The 945M's average of 8099 puts it at the 42nd percentile, sandwiched tightly between the NVIDIA GRID K2 at 8080 and cards like the AMD Radeon R9 M360, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, all within half a percent of its score. In short, even the flagship desktop card of 2014 only sits four percentile points above a budget mobile chip in the all-GPU rankings, a reflection of how far the overall database has moved, but the direct head-to-head between these two remains a landslide.

Where Each One Wins

The TITAN BLACK wins every recorded contest. Its OpenCL victory of 236.1 percent carries over logically to every workload that scales with shader count, memory bandwidth, or compute throughput. With 2880 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, 48 render output units, a 384-bit memory bus moving 336.0 GB/s, and 6 GB of GDDR5, it is built for sustained high-resolution rendering and general-purpose compute of its era. The data shows a pixel rate of 58.80 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 235.2 GTexel/s, figures that dwarf the 945M's 16.32 GPixel/s and 40.80 GTexel/s.

The 945M's wins are not found in benchmark scores but in platform characteristics. It is an MXM module with no external power connectors, a board power target of 75 W, and no requirement for a suggested system supply, whereas the TITAN BLACK is a dual-slot desktop card with a 250 W rating, one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector, and a suggested 600 W power supply. It also supports a newer Vulkan version, 1.4 versus the TITAN BLACK's 1.2.175, a consequence of its more recent 2015-10-26 release date against the TITAN BLACK's 2014-02-17 launch. For a portable system where the TITAN BLACK's 267 mm length, 111 mm height, and 38 mm width are simply unusable, the 945M is the only viable option of the two.

Architecture Differences

Both GPUs were fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm process, and interestingly both achieve an identical transistor density of 12.6M per mm². Everything else about the silicon differs. The TITAN BLACK uses the GK110B chip on the Kepler architecture, part of the desktop GeForce 700 generation, with 7080 million transistors spread across a 561 mm² die. The 945M uses the GM107 chip on the Maxwell architecture, from the mobile GeForce 900M generation, with 1870 million transistors on a 148 mm² die. The die size difference alone, nearly fourfold, mirrors the compute difference recorded in the benchmarks.

Maxwell's efficiency focus is visible in the clocks: the 945M runs a 928 MHz base and 1020 MHz boost, higher than the TITAN BLACK's 889 MHz base and 980 MHz boost, yet delivers a fraction of the throughput because it has 640 shading units, 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. Neither card has RT cores or tensor cores; those features postdate both designs. Feature-level support splits slightly: the TITAN BLACK claims DirectX 12 with a feature level of 11_1 while the 945M is DirectX 12 at feature level 11_0, and both support OpenGL 4.6. The TITAN BLACK descended from the GeForce 600 line and was succeeded by GeForce 900; the 945M followed the GeForce 800M series and was succeeded by GeForce 10 Mobile.

Specification Differences

The memory subsystems are the widest divide. The TITAN BLACK pairs 6 GB of GDDR5 with a 384-bit bus and 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, with memory running at 1750 MHz, 7 Gbps effective. The 945M has 2 GB of DDR3 on a 128-bit bus with just 28.80 GB/s of bandwidth, memory clocked at 900 MHz, 1800 Mbps effective. That is an order-of-magnitude bandwidth advantage for the desktop card.

Power and form factor diverge as covered above: 250 W versus 75 W, dual-slot with two auxiliary connectors versus an MXM module with none, and a suggested 600 W supply versus no suggested supply. The bus interfaces differ, PCIe 3.0 x16 versus MXM-B (3.0). Display outputs are fixed on the TITAN BLACK, with two DVI, one HDMI 1.4a, and one DisplayPort 1.2, while the 945M's outputs are portable-device dependent. The TITAN BLACK carried a launch MSRP of 999 USD; no launch MSRP is recorded for the 945M.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in benchmarks?

A: The GTX TITAN BLACK. It won the only shared test, geekbench_opencl, 27218 to 8099, a margin of 236.1 percent, and its compute specs (5.645 TFLOPS FP32 versus 1,305.6 GFLOPS) confirm the gap.

Q: Do they use the same manufacturing process?

A: Yes. Both were fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm node, and both achieve the same 12.6M transistors per mm² density, though the TITAN BLACK's 561 mm² die is far larger than the 945M's 148 mm² die.

Q: Which GPU has better memory?

A: The TITAN BLACK, by a wide margin. It has 6 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth, while the 945M has 2 GB of DDR3 on a 128-bit bus with 28.80 GB/s.

Q: How do they compare in power consumption?

A: The TITAN BLACK is rated at 250 W and needs one 6-pin plus one 8-pin connector with a suggested 600 W supply. The 945M is rated at 75 W, has no power connectors, and is an MXM module for laptops.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life. The TITAN BLACK launched on 2014-02-17 and the 945M on 2015-10-26.

Q: Which supports the newer Vulkan version?

A: The 945M supports Vulkan 1.4, while the TITAN BLACK supports Vulkan 1.2.175, reflecting the 945M's more recent driver-era release.