GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, which comes with clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be 6% faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be a little bit (about 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be much (approximately 136%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.