GeForce 940M vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 310, which has a core clock frequency of 589 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 16 SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M is a lot (more or less 446%) more effective 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 940M is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.