GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 460

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 460, which has GPU clock speed of 675 MHz, and 768 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 336 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 460 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (440%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a lot (approximately 702%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33088 (702%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13844 (588%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.