GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89728 (165%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 50%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (about 500%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (500%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.