GeForce 8600 GTS vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 340, which comes with GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 850 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 96 SPUs, 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 8600 GTS		75 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 340 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (70%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 is a lot (more or less 63%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GTS. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be much (about 23%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 340, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1000 (23%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.