GeForce GT 340 1GB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which has core speeds of 783 MHz on the GPU, and 902 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340 1GB		69 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 37 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be 6% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3328 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 42%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 340 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7456 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8128 (185%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.