My H81 motherboard provides a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. The GT 610 is listed as PCIe 2.0 x16 with 8 GB/s of bandwidth, while the GT 1030 uses PCIe 3.0 x4 and is limited by the older platform. Does that mean the GT 610 would deliver higher gaming FPS, or would the GT 1030 still be faster?
3 Answers
PCIe bandwidth can reduce performance in some situations, especially when a card runs out of VRAM, but the limitation here is unlikely to make a GT 1030 slower than a GT 610. The 1030 is still a low-end card, but it can handle many older games and some newer ones at low settings and resolution.
The GT 1030 will still be much faster. PCIe lane count and link bandwidth are only one part of the picture; the GPU's architecture, shader resources, clock speeds, and memory subsystem matter far more here. The GT 1030 is several times faster than the GT 610, and running it on PCIe 2.0 x4 generally does not erase that advantage. Also, a PCIe x4 graphics card can work in a longer x16 slot, but it still operates with four lanes.
Yes. Choose the GT 1030 if those are the options, preferably the GDDR5 version. Avoid the slower DDR4 version. The integrated graphics on many fourth-generation Intel CPUs are already roughly comparable to a GT 610, so moving to the GT 610 would not be a meaningful gaming upgrade.
So even though the H81 platform is limited to PCIe 2.0, the GT 1030 remains the better choice?