GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 95% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 51584 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 21%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16976 (386%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.