GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4730 should be 6% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 will be much (approximately 27%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (27%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4730 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (27%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.