GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 420, which comes with a clock speed of 700 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 48 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (38%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 340 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (89%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be quite a bit (approximately 214%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (214%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a lot (approximately 57%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 420, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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