GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 280, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 602 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1107 MHz on this card. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is quite a bit (about 174%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 should be much (about 338%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 340, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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