GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5670, which features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5670 should be 300% faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 is a lot (approximately 229%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10788 (229%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5670 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3844 (163%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high 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 speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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