In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 are very slightly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has a 278 MHz higher core clock speed but 8 fewer Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 950. The lower TMU count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the GeForce GTX 1050 manages to provide 2.6 GTexel/s better texturing performance. 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 278 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 950 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GeForce GTX 1050 providing 8.9 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. 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 less than a year after the GTX 950, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

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 GeForce GTX 1050 and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has 6.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 950, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 is marginally better than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GTX 1050 has 640 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition has 768. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 is 1257 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 950 is 1299. The GTX 950 having 42 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the GeForce GTX 1050 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The GeForce GTX 1050 transistor size technology is 14 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 950. This means that the GeForce GTX 1050 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GTX 1050 requires 75 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition requires 75 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GTX 1050 and a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the GTX 950. The two GPUs require the same amount of wattage to run. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.