GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with a core clock speed of 1126 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (120%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 137984 (160%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be much (approximately 116%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77312 (116%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (about 116%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38656 (116%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.