GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this 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 1GB		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 181 Watts (262%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 72704 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (about 184%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (184%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 355%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (355%)

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 past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.