GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 240, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 240 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be quite a bit (more or less 210%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9888 (210%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 240 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3484 (148%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.