NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1057 points

1419 points

34% slightly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

24 FPS

29 FPS

6 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

16 FPS

22 FPS

6 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

16 FPS

20 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

12 FPS

17 FPS

6 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

2108 points

2293 points

8% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

169.72 points

1% slightly higher Blender score

167.72 points

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

15058 points

17784 points

18% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

17020 points

21072 points

23% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

16857 points

22380 points

32% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

16153 points

19796 points

22% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

17923 points

20845 points

16% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

999 MHz

1127 MHz

12% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1139 MHz

1178 MHz

3% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

Identical

4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

128 Bit

Identical

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

112.1 GB/s

112.2 GB/s

0.09% slightly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

75 W

60% significantly lower TDP

120 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

18.22 Gigapixels/s

37.7 Gigapixels/s

106% significantly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

45.56 Gigatexels/s

75.39 Gigatexels/s

65% significantly higher texture rate

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

640

1024

60% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

60% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

100% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

260th of 586

239th of 586

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2018 January

2015 January

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.6

4.5

GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q vs GeForce GTX 960 specs and performance

For gaming, the GeForce GTX 960 graphics card is better than the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q in our tests.

The GeForce GTX 960 has a slightly higher core clock speed. This is the frequency at which the graphics core is running at. While not necessarily an indicator of overall performance, this metric can be useful when comparing two GPUs based on the same architecture. In addition, the GeForce GTX 960 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, they both have the same amount of memory at 4 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q has a significantly lower TDP at 75 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 960 at 120 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the GeForce GTX 960 is better than the GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q.