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GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GT 340 makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 54400 MB/sec
Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 50%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 17600 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 4400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 22000 (500%)

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

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GeForce GT 340

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GT 340 Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year February 2010 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name GT215 R680
Memory 512 MB 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 550 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 3400 MHz 1800 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 69 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 54400 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 17600 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4400 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 96 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 32 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 8 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 55 nm
Transistors 727 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.3 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GT 340

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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