GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 1030, which makes use of a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1265 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 384 SPUs along with 32 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 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should in theory be a little bit superior to the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is a lot (more or less 30%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9280 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be quite a bit (approximately 95%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9840 (95%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.