GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 340, which features core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 will be 113% quicker than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (113%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 will be a lot (approximately 100%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at FSAA, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.