GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 970, which comes with a clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1664 SPUs, 104 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 114 Watts (368%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (approximately 2217%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104488 (2217%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64844 (2752%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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.