GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which features a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (384%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6790 should be 740% faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 118400 (740%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be a lot (approximately 613%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28888 (613%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (about 470%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 310, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11084 (470%)

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 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 worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.