GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 469 Watts (1513%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 624000 (3900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 7505%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 353624 (7505%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (more or less 5431%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 127948 (5431%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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