GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9152 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be quite a bit (about 42%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (127%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 processed in one second.

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