GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (about 700%) better at AF 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 should be a lot (more or less 1064%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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 in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.