GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (223%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 1343%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63288 (1343%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (about 1054%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 310, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24844 (1054%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.