GeForce GT 340 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 590, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 855 MHz on this model. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 296 Watts (429%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 273920 (504%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 should be a lot (about 341%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60096 (341%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce GT 340, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 53872 (1224%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.