GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 340 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (42%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB will be much (more or less 50%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is a lot (more or less 50%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 340, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.