GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation 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 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be 112% faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be much (about 70%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be a lot (more or less 173%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (173%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.