GeForce 940M vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 310, which has a GPU core clock speed of 589 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 16 Stream Processors, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M will be a lot (approximately 446%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21016 (446%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6220 (264%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.