GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, in theory, should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GT 340 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8960 (16%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB will be much (approximately 40%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 340. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7024 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB is a lot (about 133%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 340, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5860 (133%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.