GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GT 340 1GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 340 1GB should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (42%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB should be much (more or less 50%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is a lot (more or less 50%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340 1GB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high 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 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.