GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 340 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 will be quite a bit (approximately 65%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is superior to the GeForce GT 340, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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