GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 219 Watts (706%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 1550% faster than the GeForce GT 310 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (1550%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (more or less 2413%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113688 (2413%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27244 (1156%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.