GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 128320 (508%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (about 580%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58000 (580%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (444%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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