In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has a 228 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 980, but the GTX 980 has 88 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GTX 1050. As a result, the GTX 980 exhibits a 89.9 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GeForce GTX 1050. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has a 228 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 980, but the GTX 980 has 32 more Render Output Units than the GeForce GTX 1050. As a result, the GTX 980 exhibits a 28.8 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GeForce GTX 1050. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GTX 1050 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 980, and so the GeForce GTX 1050 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 980.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GTX 980 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GeForce GTX 1050, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 980 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 980 has 112.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GTX 1050, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 980 is massively better than the GeForce GTX 1050.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has 640 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition has 2048. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 is 1257 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 980 is 3362. The GTX 980 having 2105 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 980 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GeForce GTX 1050.

The GeForce GTX 1050 transistor size technology is 14 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 980. This means that the GeForce GTX 1050 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 980.

The GeForce GTX 1050 requires 75 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 980 Palit JetStream 4GB Edition requires 180 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GTX 1050 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 980. The GTX 980 requires 105 Watts more than the GeForce GTX 1050 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 980 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GTX 1050.