GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has 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 made up 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 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is 112% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is much (approximately 70%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be quite a bit (about 173%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.