GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 240, which comes with a core clock speed of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 141 Watts (470%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should be much faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83088 (289%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is quite a bit (about 184%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26872 (184%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is superior to the Radeon R7 240, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10288 (176%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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