GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be 112% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be quite a bit (approximately 70%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the maximum fill rate.