GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this card. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 89792 (165%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (about 345%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (345%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce GT 340, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19120 (435%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.