In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M SLI are marginally better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M 2GB.

The GTX 950M has a 489 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 480M, but the GTX 480M has 48 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 950M. As a result, the GTX 480M exhibits a 0.8 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GTX 950M. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 950M has a 489 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 480M, but the GTX 480M has 48 more Render Output Units than the GTX 950M. As a result, the GTX 480M exhibits a 12.6 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GTX 950M. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 950M was released over three years more recently than the GTX 480M, and so the GTX 950M is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the GTX 480M when running the latest games.

The GTX 480M has 2048 MB more video memory than the GTX 950M, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 480M also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 480M has 73.6 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 950M, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 480M is much better than the GTX 950M.

The GeForce GTX 950M 2GB has 640 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 480M SLI has 704. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 950M is 858 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 480M is 598. The GTX 950M having 260 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the GTX 480M performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The GTX 950M transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 480M. This means that the GTX 950M is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 480M. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the GTX 950M should consume less power than the GTX 480M.

The GeForce GTX 950M 2GB requires 50 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 480M SLI requires 200 Watts. The GTX 480M requires 150 Watts more than the GTX 950M to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 480M may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 950M.