GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 213 Watts (687%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is 1102% faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176384 (1102%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 949%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44696 (949%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34700 (1473%)

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

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.