GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (329%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 265600 (488%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (more or less 700%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123200 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 1064%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 46800 (1064%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the max fill rate.