GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1126 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (432%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (1300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be quite a bit (more or less 2959%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139416 (2959%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 69708 (2959%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one 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, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.