GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 118 Watts (169%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (182%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be quite a bit (about 286%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (286%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.