GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 1216 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a little bit (more or less 7%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 688 (7%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is superior to the GeForce GT 315, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5688 (114%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.