GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870, which has core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 should be 508% faster than the GeForce GT 315 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (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 (approximately 700%) better at AF 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 quite a bit (more or less 540%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 315, and should be 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.