GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (135%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (more or less 197%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34600 (197%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (427%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 applied in one 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.