GeForce GT 1030 vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with a core clock frequency of 740 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (370%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 1030 will be 54% faster than the GeForce GTS 150 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 17152 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a bit (approximately 17%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6880 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8400 (71%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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