In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 has a 176 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 950, but the GTX 950 has 16 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GT 1030. As a result, the GTX 950 exhibits a 11.5 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 176 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 950, but the GTX 950 has 16 more Render Output Units than the GeForce GT 1030. As a result, the GTX 950 exhibits a 14.4 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 950, 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 950.

The GeForce GT 1030 and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GTX 950 has 73.8 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GT 1030, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 950 is much better than the GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition has 768. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 1030 is 578 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 950 is 1299. The GTX 950 having 721 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 950 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 950. This means that the GeForce GT 1030 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 950.

The GeForce GT 1030 requires 30 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 950 LP MSI OC v3 2GB Edition requires 75 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GeForce GT 1030 and a PSU with at least 350 Watts for the GTX 950. The GTX 950 requires 45 Watts more than the GeForce GT 1030 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 950 may have a slight adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GT 1030.