GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 1030, which has core clock speeds of 1265 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be just a bit (approximately 20%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6880 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is superior to the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10640 (111%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on many 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.