GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is quite a bit (about 70%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is a lot (about 173%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (173%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.