GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 1030, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1265 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1502 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (217%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 will be a lot (about 95%) better at AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19680 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.