GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a lot (approximately 50%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 500%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (500%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.