GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which comes with a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 159 Watts (513%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 2G should be 1040% faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (1040%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G will be a lot (about 2206%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103928 (2206%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28684 (1217%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.