GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be 17% quicker than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9152 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be a lot (approximately 42%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (42%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be much (about 127%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (127%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.