GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 460 SE

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 288 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (384%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 SE, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 92800 (580%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be quite a bit (more or less 562%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26488 (562%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 SE will be quite a bit (more or less 783%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18444 (783%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.