GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a clock speed of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is much (about 213%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37440 (213%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (more or less 525%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23120 (525%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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