In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 has a 87 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 970, but the GTX 970 has 72 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GT 1030. As a result, the GTX 970 exhibits a 81.1 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GeForce GT 1030. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GeForce GT 1030 has a 87 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 970, but the GTX 970 has 40 more Render Output Units than the GeForce GT 1030. As a result, the GTX 970 exhibits a 45.2 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the GeForce GT 1030. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GeForce GT 1030 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 970, and so the GeForce GT 1030 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 970.

The GTX 970 has 2048 MB more video memory than the GeForce GT 1030, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 970 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 970 has 192.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GT 1030, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 970 is massively better than the GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition has 1664. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 1030 is 578 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 970 is 2959. The GTX 970 having 2381 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 970 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 970. This means that the GeForce GT 1030 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 970.

The GeForce GT 1030 requires 30 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 970 EVGA Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB Edition requires 150 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GT 1030 and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the GTX 970. The GTX 970 requires 120 Watts more than the GeForce GT 1030 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 970 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GT 1030.