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

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up 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 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.