GeForce GTX 1050 vs GeForce GTX 960

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 960, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1127 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
GeForce GTX 1050		6657 points
	Difference: 970 (15%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1050 should theoretically be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 2688 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960 will be quite a bit (more or less 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17968 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7264 (20%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.