GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (approximately 286%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (286%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 518%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 340, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.