GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (706%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 is 1000% quicker than the GeForce GT 310 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (1000%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 1693%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79768 (1693%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the GeForce GT 310, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25804 (1095%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.