GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 vs GeForce GT 340

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 340, which comes with GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 850 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 96 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		47 Watts
GeForce GT 340		69 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 340 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		54400 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (325%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a lot (about 104%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		17600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8960 (104%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 340 should be a small bit (approximately 2%) better at AA than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 340		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (2%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.