GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (172%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (approximately 286%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (286%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (approximately 518%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.