GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1120 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is much (approximately 186%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (186%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 max amount of information (in units of 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 the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.