GeForce GT 340 1GB vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 340 1GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (240%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB is a small bit (about 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4650 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (9%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.