GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 594 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (170%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should be much (about 203%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9544 (203%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11900 (505%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.