NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs AMD Radeon HD 7870
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 and AMD Radeon HD 7870 sit within a few percent of each other on our index. Treat them as equivalent in raw performance and decide on price, power draw and — for graphics cards — video memory instead.
| Specification | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 | AMD Radeon HD 7870 |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | NVIDIA | AMD |
| Architecture | Pascal | GCN 1 |
| Relative performance index | 35 | 36 (better) |
| Video memory | 2 GB | 2 GB |
| Memory type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Memory bus | 128-bit | 256-bit (better) |
| Release year | 2016 (better) | 2012 |
| Board power | 75 W (better) | 175 W |
| Suggested PSU | 300 W (better) | 500 W |
| Hardware ray tracing | No | No |
| Upscaling support | Not recorded | Not recorded |
| DirectX | 12 | 12 |
Green marks the stronger figure for that row only — for power draw and PSU requirement, lower is treated as better. Performance indexes are CanMyPcPlay estimates; read how they are derived.
Which should you pick?
- Check video memory, not just speed. A faster card with less VRAM can perform worse in recent titles at high texture settings.
- Check power and clearance. Confirm your PSU and case can take the card — the build checker does this.
- Upscaling support differs. DLSS is NVIDIA-only; FSR and XeSS run more broadly.
Other comparisons
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs Intel Iris Xe Graphics (integrated, 96 EU)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs AMD Radeon 780M (integrated)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs Intel Arc Graphics (integrated, Meteor Lake)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 vs AMD Radeon 680M (integrated)