GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 260X, which features core clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (271%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (550%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (approximately 1207%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56888 (1207%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be a lot (approximately 647%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15244 (647%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.