GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 231 Watts (335%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265600 (488%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 627%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 110400 (627%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (about 1064%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.