GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 XT is 253% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (253%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 405%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (405%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (573%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.