GeForce GT 310 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (545%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 310 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 1394%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65688 (1394%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23244 (987%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.