FirePro A300 vs ION 2
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | not rated | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Architecture | Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013) | TeraScale 3 (2010−2013) |
| GPU code name | GT218 | Trinity GL |
| Market segment | Desktop | Workstation |
| Release date | 3 June 2008 (16 years ago) | 6 June 2012 (12 years ago) |
Detailed specifications
General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 16 | 384 |
| Core clock speed | 500 MHz | 760 MHz |
| Boost clock speed | no data | 905 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 260 million | 1,303 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 40 nm | 32 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 20 Watt | 65 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 4.000 | 21.72 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.03424 TFLOPS | 0.695 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 4 | 8 |
| TMUs | 8 | 24 |
Form factor & compatibility
Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 2.0 x16 | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Width | IGP | IGP |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.
| Memory type | System Shared | System Shared |
| Maximum RAM amount | System Shared | System Shared |
| Memory bus width | System Shared | System Shared |
| Memory clock speed | System Shared | System Shared |
| Shared memory | - | no data |
Connectivity and outputs
Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.
| Display Connectors | No outputs | No outputs |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 11.1 (10_1) | 11.2 (11_0) |
| Shader Model | 4.1 | 5.0 |
| OpenGL | 3.3 | 4.4 |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Vulkan | N/A | N/A |
| CUDA | 1.2 | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 3 June 2008 | 6 June 2012 |
| Chip lithography | 40 nm | 32 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 20 Watt | 65 Watt |
ION 2 has 225% lower power consumption.
FirePro A300, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 4 years, and a 25% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between ION 2 and FirePro A300. We've got no test results to judge.
Be aware that ION 2 is a desktop card while FirePro A300 is a workstation one.
Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.
Comparisons with similar GPUs
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
