GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 340 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 850 MHz on this particular 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 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 340 1GB should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 1GB is a lot (about 104%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (104%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 340 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (2%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes 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 the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.