GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 150, which uses a 55 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 740 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 500 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (104%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 340 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTS 150 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (70%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is much (more or less 169%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29760 (169%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7440 (169%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.