GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with core speeds of 730 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 167 Watts (557%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 344% quicker than the Radeon R7 240 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (about 426%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62200 (426%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (approximately 229%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 240, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13360 (229%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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