GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be quite a bit (approximately 42%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the GeForce GT 340, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (182%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.