GeForce GT 640 Rev. 2 vs ATI Radeon HD 3850

Place in performance ranking	1108	721
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.02	0.19
Architecture	TeraScale (2005−2013)	Kepler 2.0 (2013−2015)
GPU code name	RV670	GK208
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	19 November 2007 (16 years ago)	29 May 2013 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$179	$89

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

GT 640 Rev. 2 has 850% better value for money than ATI HD 3850.

Detailed specifications

General performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider their benchmark and gaming test results. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	320	384
Core clock speed	668 MHz	1046 MHz
Number of transistors	666 million	915 million
Manufacturing process technology	55 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	75 Watt	49 Watt
Texture fill rate	10.69	33.47
Floating-point performance	0.4275 gflops	0.8033 gflops

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x8
Length	208 mm	145 mm
Width	1-slot	1-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin	None

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR3	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	1 GB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	64 Bit
Memory clock speed	1660 MHz	5008 MHz
Memory bandwidth	53.12 GB/s	40.06 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	2x DVI, 1x S-Video	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x VGA
HDMI	-	+

API compatibility

List of supported graphics and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	10.1 (10_1)	12 (11_0)
Shader Model	4.1	5.1
OpenGL	3.3	4.6
OpenCL	N/A	1.2
Vulkan	N/A	1.1.126
CUDA	-	3.5

Gaming performance

Let's see how good the compared graphics cards are for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in FPS.

Pros & cons summary

Performance score	1.02	3.55
Recency	19 November 2007	29 May 2013
Chip lithography	55 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	75 Watt	49 Watt

GT 640 Rev. 2 has a 248% higher aggregate performance score, an age advantage of 5 years, a 96.4% more advanced lithography process, and 53.1% lower power consumption.

The GeForce GT 640 Rev. 2 is our recommended choice as it beats the Radeon HD 3850 in performance tests.

Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.