GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 42%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.