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GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

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

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5550, which comes with GPU core speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 310 will be 25% quicker than the Radeon HD 5550 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 310 16000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5550 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 is quite a bit (more or less 87%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310 4712 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 4088 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310 2356 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2044 (87%)

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

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GT 310 Radeon HD 5550
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year November 2009 February 9, 2010
Code Name GT218 Redwood LE
Memory 512 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 589 MHz 550 MHz
Memory Speed 2000 MHz 800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 31 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 16000 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 4712 Mtexels/sec 8800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 2356 Mpixels/sec 4400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 8 16
Render Output Units 4 8
Bus Type DDR2 DDR2
Bus Width 64-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 260 million 627 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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

Display Prices

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GeForce GT 310

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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