GeForce GTX 1050 vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 999 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 1050 should theoretically be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 2800 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 will be a lot (about 47%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17296 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (169%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.