GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GT 450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 450 (OEM), which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 790 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units 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 450 (OEM)		106 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be 500% quicker than the GeForce GT 310 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) should be a lot (more or less 302%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14248 (302%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 450 (OEM) will be quite a bit (about 705%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 450 (OEM)		18960 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16604 (705%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.