GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB makes use of a 65/55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 96 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 340, which has a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 850 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.