GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 850 MHz on this particular card. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. ATi has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Price Comparison

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page. We have no control over the accuracy of their search results.

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB Amazon.com Other US-based stores Amazon.co.uk Amazon.de Amazon.fr

Specifications

Model	GeForce GT 240 GDDR5	Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	ATi
Year	Novermber 2009	Nov 7, 2008
Code Name	GT215	R700
Fab Process	40 nm	55 nm
Bus	PCIe x16	PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge)
Memory	512 MB	1024 MB (x2)
Core Speed	550 MHz	625 MHz (x2)
Shader Speed	1360 MHz	(N/A) MHz (x2)
Memory Speed	850 MHz (3400 MHz effective)	993 MHz (1986 MHz effective) (x2)
Unified Shaders	96	800(160x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units	32	40 (x2)
Render Output Units	8	16 (x2)
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Bus Width	128-bit	256-bit (x2)
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.2	OpenGL 3.0
Power (Max TDP)	70 watts	250 watts
Shader Model	4.1	4.1
Bandwidth	54400 MB/sec	127104 MB/sec
Texel Rate	17600 Mtexels/sec	50000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4400 Mpixels/sec	20000 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.