GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 3050

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 3050, which has core clock speeds of 1552 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3050 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 is a bit (more or less 14%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14960 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17536 (35%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.