GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

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

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (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 (approximately 241%) more effective at texture filtering 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a better choice, and very much so. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.