GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 281 Watts (407%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (324%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (about 241%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (241%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (approximately 445%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 fill 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 reach the max fill rate.