GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 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 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (465%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (about 1598%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75288 (1598%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29644 (1258%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.