GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 660, which has GPU clock speed of 980 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1502 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (352%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128192 (801%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be a lot (about 1564%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73688 (1564%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21164 (898%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many 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.