GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (465%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 310 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be much (more or less 851%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40088 (851%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the GeForce GT 310, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10444 (443%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it 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 AA, 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 texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.