GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 281 Watts (407%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (324%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be a lot (approximately 241%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (241%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.