GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 870M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 870M, which features a clock frequency of 941 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1344 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 870M will be 12% quicker than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (more or less 58%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38576 (58%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 870M, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10824 (48%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.