GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs 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 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 65%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot (more or less 143%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.