GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (approximately 494%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86896 (494%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.