In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Intel HD i7 2600S are significantly better than the AMD Radeon X1050.

The HD i7 2600S has a 450 MHz higher core clock speed than the Radeon X1050, but the Radeon X1050 has 3 more Texture Mapping Units than the HD i7 2600S. As a result, the Radeon X1050 exhibits a 0.7 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the HD i7 2600S. Neither of these GPUs support DirectX 10 or higher, so Texture Rate holds more weight than when comparing more modern GPUs.

The HD i7 2600S has a 450 MHz higher core clock speed than the Radeon X1050, but the Radeon X1050 has 3 more Render Output Units than the HD i7 2600S. As a result, the Radeon X1050 exhibits a 0.7 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the HD i7 2600S. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The HD i7 2600S was released over three years more recently than the Radeon X1050, and so the HD i7 2600S is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the Radeon X1050 when running the latest games.

Both GPUs exhibit very poor performance, so rather than upgrading from one to the other you should consider looking at more powerful GPUs. Neither of these will be able to run the latest games in any playable way.

The Radeon X1050 has 128 MB video memory, but the HD i7 2600S does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD i7 2600S has 6 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon X1050 has 4. However, the actual shader performance of the HD i7 2600S is 32 and the actual shader performance of the Radeon X1050 is 1. The HD i7 2600S having 31 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD i7 2600S delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Radeon X1050.

The HD i7 2600S transistor size technology is 78 nm (nanometers) smaller than the Radeon X1050. This means that the HD i7 2600S is expected to run massively cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the Radeon X1050. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the HD i7 2600S should consume less power than the Radeon X1050.

The HD i7 2600S requires 95 Watts to run and the Radeon X1050 requires 24 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the HD i7 2600S and a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Radeon X1050. The HD i7 2600S requires 71 Watts more than the Radeon X1050 to run. The difference is significant enough that the HD i7 2600S may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the Radeon X1050.