GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 67584 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is just a bit (more or less 20%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13184 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should be just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1408 (4%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.