GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 860M, which has GPU clock speed of 797 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 1152 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be 34% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22016 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a bit (about 15%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9696 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20656 (162%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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