GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot (more or less 355%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62400 (355%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be much (about 627%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (627%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.