GeForce GT 340 1GB vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 999 MHz on this card. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 113 Watts (164%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57488 (106%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is much (approximately 109%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19264 (109%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a lot (more or less 267%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11728 (267%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

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