GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 224% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (224%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 380%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66880 (380%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 540%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 340, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23760 (540%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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