GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 850 MHz on this card. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 91%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (118%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.