GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 340, which has a clock frequency of 550 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 850 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 96 SPUs, 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 768MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 340 should be a lot 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 (approximately 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9600 GSO 768MB is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.