GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 230 should be much faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is a lot (more or less 66%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5800 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is much (more or less 33%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1440 (33%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.