GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 1173%) faster with regards to 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, by far. (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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.