GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has GPU clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7850 should be 860% quicker than the GeForce GT 310 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be quite a bit (more or less 1068%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 is much (about 1068%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB 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 its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.