GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M385X should be 500% quicker than the GeForce GT 310 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (about 1207%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56888 (1207%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15244 (647%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.