GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 106 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (approximately 355%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62400 (355%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 627%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.