GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 315 in general. (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 (about 745%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (approximately 463%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 315, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.