In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition are massively better than the Nvidia GeForce GT 1030.

The GTX 1080 has a 456 MHz higher core clock speed and 128 more Texture Mapping Units than the GeForce GT 1030. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 233.2 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 1080 has a 456 MHz higher core clock speed and 48 more Render Output Units than the GeForce GT 1030. This results in the GTX 1080 providing 89.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. 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 less than a year after the GTX 1080, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GTX 1080 has 6144 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 1080 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 1080 has 291.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GeForce GT 1030, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 1080 is massively better than the GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 has 384 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition has 2560. However, the actual shader performance of the GeForce GT 1030 is 578 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 1080 is 6383. The GTX 1080 having 5805 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 1080 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GeForce GT 1030.

The GeForce GT 1030 requires 30 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 1080 MSI Gaming X 8GB Edition requires 180 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 1080. The GTX 1080 requires 150 Watts more than the GeForce GT 1030 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GTX 1080 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GeForce GT 1030.