GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 198 Watts (381%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 150720 (596%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (more or less 745%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74480 (745%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23160 (463%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.