GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (about 355%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62400 (355%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is quite a bit (about 627%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (627%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.