GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 82 Watts (119%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (135%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (more or less 197%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34600 (197%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (427%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.