GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 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 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 340 should be 3% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 is quite a bit (about 65%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB will be much (approximately 143%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.