GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 280, which comes with core speeds of 602 MHz on the GPU, and 1107 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 167 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 87296 (160%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be quite a bit (more or less 174%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30560 (174%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14864 (338%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.