GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 1030

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 1030, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1265 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1502 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up 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 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (217%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should theoretically perform a small 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 is quite a bit (more or less 95%) better at texture filtering 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 using lots of anti-aliasing 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.