GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 231 Watts (335%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265600 (488%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (approximately 627%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 110400 (627%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (approximately 1064%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46800 (1064%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.