GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 198 Watts (381%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 944% faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 238720 (944%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (more or less 1084%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 108400 (1084%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24600 (492%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.