GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, 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 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 340 should in theory perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 will be much (about 65%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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.