In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB.

The GTX 1080 has a 418 MHz higher core clock speed and 112 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 1050 Ti. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 211.4 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 GTX 1080 has a 418 MHz higher core clock speed and 32 more Render Output Units than the GTX 1050 Ti. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 68 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 GTX 1050 Ti was released less than a year after the GTX 1080, 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 GTX 1080 has 4096 MB more video memory than the GTX 1050 Ti, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 1080 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 1080 has 211.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 1050 Ti, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 1080 is massively better than the GTX 1050 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB has 768 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition has 2560. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 1050 Ti is 1443 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 1080 is 6383. The GTX 1080 having 4940 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 1080 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 1050 Ti.

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB requires 75 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition requires 180 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GTX 1050 Ti and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 1080. The GTX 1080 requires 105 Watts more than the GTX 1050 Ti to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 1080 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 1050 Ti.