GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (32%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 will be much (about 42%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot (about 182%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.