GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 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 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9152 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a lot (about 42%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 340, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (127%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.