GeForce 840M vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 310, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 589 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 16 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 840M		30 Watts
GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce 840M is quite a bit (approximately 424%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 840M		24696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19984 (424%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 840M is superior to the GeForce GT 310, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 840M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5876 (249%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.