GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 340, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 850 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 96 Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 340 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (240%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 will be much (approximately 50%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 should be quite a bit (more or less 50%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.