GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB 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 clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs as well as 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 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8960 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB should be a lot (more or less 40%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7024 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5860 (133%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.