GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 319 Watts (1029%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 1340% faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 214400 (1340%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 1173%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55288 (1173%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be a lot (more or less 919%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 310, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21644 (919%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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