GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 340, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 850 MHz on this particular model. It features 96 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 1GB will be a small bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB is superior to the GeForce GT 340, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (136%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.