GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 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		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 281 Watts (407%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (324%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (more or less 241%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (241%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.