GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7970, which comes with GPU core speed of 925 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (706%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 1550% faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (1550%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 2413%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113688 (2413%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (more or less 1156%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 310, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27244 (1156%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.