GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

Compare that 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 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 1GB will be 325% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 1GB is much (approximately 300%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 340 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (100%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.