GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs GeForce GTX 970M

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 970M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 924 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a bit (approximately 11%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7104 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10944 (33%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.