GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 3050

Intro

Compare those specs 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 particular model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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 2% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 will be a small bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (approximately 35%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce RTX 3050, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.