GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 1030, which comes with a core clock speed of 1265 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1502 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 16 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 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 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (217%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is much (about 95%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19680 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is superior to the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.