GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 270

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1400 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (384%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1020%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a lot (approximately 1428%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67288 (1428%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is much (more or less 1122%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26444 (1122%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.