GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 340, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 36 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be 6% quicker than the GeForce GT 340 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB is a lot (more or less 91%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (about 118%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (118%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.