GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (more or less 494%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86896 (494%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (approximately 579%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25456 (579%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.