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 speed at 1265 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1502 MHz on this particular model. It features 384 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should be a bit faster than 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 should be a lot (approximately 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 (about 95%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and also able to handle higher screen 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.