GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which features a core clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 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 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (319%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (approximately 1068%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50328 (1068%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot (approximately 1068%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25164 (1068%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.