GeForce 940M vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 310, which comes with core clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be much (about 446%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21016 (446%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6220 (264%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.