GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 500 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 12 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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.