GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, 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 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a lot (about 42%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 182%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.