GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 460 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 675 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (113%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 29184 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is quite a bit (approximately 77%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29016 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB will be much (about 55%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (55%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.