GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 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 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 is 105% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 27904 (105%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a lot (about 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be a lot (approximately 143%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.