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GeForce GT 315 vs GeForce GT 320

Intro

The GeForce GT 315 features core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 790 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 48 SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 320, which has GPU clock speed of 540 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 790 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 72 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 should be a lot (more or less 30%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2960 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 will be a small bit (approximately 16%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 320, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 680 (16%)

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

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GeForce GT 315

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GeForce GT 320

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 315	GeForce GT 320
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	November 2009	February 2010
Code Name	GT216	GT215
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	625 MHz	540 MHz
Memory Speed	1580 MHz	1580 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	52 watts	43 watts
Bandwidth	25280 MB/sec	25280 MB/sec
Texel Rate	10000 Mtexels/sec	12960 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	5000 Mpixels/sec	4320 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	48	72
Texture Mapping Units	16	24
Render Output Units	8	8
Bus Type	DDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	486 million	727 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.2	OpenGL 3.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

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