GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 860M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 797 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1152 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 860M should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a lot (about 1524%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71800 (1524%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (more or less 441%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 310, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10396 (441%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.