GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 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
Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M275X should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is quite a bit (more or less 664%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31288 (664%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be a lot (more or less 511%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 310, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12044 (511%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.