GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, 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 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 58 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 will be 135% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (135%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (about 111%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is superior to the GeForce GT 340, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (464%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.