GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (465%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (more or less 851%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40088 (851%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be quite a bit (approximately 443%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 310, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10444 (443%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.