GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which features a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (387%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (740%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 970%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45688 (970%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is a lot (more or less 1122%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 310, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26444 (1122%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.