GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 1030, which features GPU clock speed of 1265 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1502 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 1030 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 10752 (28%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be quite a bit (more or less 53%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14080 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.