GeForce GTX 980 vs GeForce RTX 3050

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce RTX 3050, which makes use of a 8 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1552 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3050 will be 2% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering 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 a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.