GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 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 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB will be 3% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 65%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be much (more or less 143%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.