GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 1030, which uses a 16 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1265 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 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 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 1030 should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 10752 (28%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be a lot (more or less 53%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14080 (53%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is quite a bit (about 207%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13640 (207%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.