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GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 3050

Intro

The GeForce GTX 970 comes with a core clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce RTX 3050, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1552 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 8 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 in general, because of 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 should be a little 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 resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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

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GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

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GeForce RTX 3050

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 970 GeForce RTX 3050
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year September 2014 January 2022
Code Name GM204-200 Ampere GA106-150-KA-A1
Memory 4096 MB 8192 MB
Core Speed 1050 MHz 1552 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 3500 GB/s
Power (Max TDP) 145 watts 130 watts
Bandwidth 224000 MB/sec 229376 MB/sec
Texel Rate 109200 Mtexels/sec 124160 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 67200 Mpixels/sec 49664 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1664 2560
Texture Mapping Units 104 80
Render Output Units 64 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR6
Bus Width 256-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 8 nm
Transistors 5200 million 12000 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 4.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 12
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.6

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce RTX 3050

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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