GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (approximately 494%) better at texture filtering 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 (more or less 579%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.