GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 269 Watts (868%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 304000 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (approximately 2888%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 136088 (2888%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48844 (2073%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 per second.

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