GeForce GTX 1050 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 280, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 602 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 1107 MHz on this particular card. It features 240 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 is 24% faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 should be a small bit (about 12%) more effective at texture filtering 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 much (approximately 125%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.