NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

22 %

35 %

59% significantly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

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

45 FPS

82 FPS

36 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

34 FPS

43 FPS

9 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

61 FPS

30 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

33 FPS

5 FPS slightly higher Clouds frame rate

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3642

6202

70% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

308.84

1588.40

414% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

25908

72998

181% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

29153

71667

145% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

34107

56109

64% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

24099

65778

172% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

31442

64788

106% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

1552 MHz

47% significantly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

1777 MHz

50% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

8 GiB

100% significantly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

100% significantly larger memory bus width

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

0.18% slightly higher memory bandwidth

224 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

130 W

11% slightly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

16% slightly higher pixel rate

56.86 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

142.2 Gigatexels/s

16% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

9.10 TFLOPS

132% significantly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

2560

53% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

30% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

75% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

109th of 549

71st of 549

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

September 2014

January 2022

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

GDDR6

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

4.6

GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 3050 benchmarks

For gaming, the GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card is better than the GeForce GTX 970 in our tests.

In our comparison, the GeForce RTX 3050 has a significantly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. In addition, the GeForce RTX 3050 also has a significantly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

As stated by the manufacturer, the GeForce RTX 3050 has significantly more memory with 8 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce RTX 3050 has a slightly lower TDP at 130 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 970 at 145 W. TDP (Thermal Design Power) measures total heat output from the chip.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce RTX 3050 over the GeForce GTX 970.