GeForce GT 1030 vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 260, which features clock speeds of 576 MHz on the GPU, and 999 MHz on the 896 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 152 Watts (507%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 1030 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 62736 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is a little bit (approximately 10%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3616 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4112 (25%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.