GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 1GB will be 240% quicker than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (240%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is quite a bit (more or less 50%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is superior to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (50%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.