GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 494%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86896 (494%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 579%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25456 (579%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.