GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which comes with core clock speeds of 914 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 24 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 950M should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be quite a bit (approximately 676%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31848 (676%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (approximately 521%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 310, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12268 (521%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one 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 higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.