GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is 112% faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is quite a bit (approximately 70%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a lot (more or less 173%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 340, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (173%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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 one 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 - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.