GeForce GTX 1050 vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 999 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1050 should be 3% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 2800 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 will be quite a bit (about 47%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17296 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27200 (169%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.