GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be 17% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB is much (about 42%) better at texture filtering 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 running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.