GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this particular card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 47 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be 81% faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 44096 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (more or less 64%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the GeForce GT 340, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (391%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.