GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. 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

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 1GB is much (more or less 42%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (182%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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