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GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

The GeForce GT 310 has clock speeds of 589 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which has a core clock frequency of 914 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 950M should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is a lot (about 676%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31848 (676%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be quite a bit (about 521%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12268 (521%)

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

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GeForce GT 310

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GeForce GTX 950M

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 310	GeForce GTX 950M
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	November 2009	March 12 2015
Code Name	GT218	GM107
Memory	512 MB	2048 MB
Core Speed	589 MHz	914 MHz
Memory Speed	2000 MHz	2000 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	31 watts	55 watts
Bandwidth	16000 MB/sec	32000 MB/sec
Texel Rate	4712 Mtexels/sec	36560 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	2356 Mpixels/sec	14624 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	16	640
Texture Mapping Units	8	40
Render Output Units	4	16
Bus Type	DDR2	DDR3
Bus Width	64-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	28 nm
Transistors	260 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe 2.0	PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 12
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.1	OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

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