GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 340, which comes with clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 340 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (42%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 will be much (approximately 100%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same resolutions. (explain)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.