GeForce GT 340 vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4830 512MB should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 512MB is just a bit (more or less 5%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 800 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4830 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (109%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.