GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (545%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be much (approximately 1802%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84888 (1802%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 is superior to the GeForce GT 310, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23244 (987%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.