GeForce GTX 1050 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 280, which has core clock speeds of 602 MHz on the GPU, and 1107 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 161 Watts (215%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 1050 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 27008 (24%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is a small bit (about 12%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (12%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 is a lot (about 125%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24064 (125%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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