GeForce GT 310 vs GeForce GTX 860M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 860M, which features a core clock frequency of 797 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1152 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 860M should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be quite a bit (about 1524%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71800 (1524%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10396 (441%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.