GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 340, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this model. It features 96 SPUs along with 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		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should be 6% faster than the GeForce GT 340 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is a little bit (approximately 18%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (136%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.