GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 1GB should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 1GB should be quite a bit (about 65%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.