GeForce GTX 980 vs GeForce RTX 3050

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 3050, which uses a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1552 MHz. The GDDR6 memory works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3050 should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a bit (approximately 16%) better at AF than the GeForce RTX 3050. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19968 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (45%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 handling 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 graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.