GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 123 Watts (237%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 will be 508% faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 128320 (508%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (about 700%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70000 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 540%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 315, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27000 (540%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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