GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M380 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be much (about 749%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35288 (749%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13644 (579%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.