GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific card. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 is quite a bit (more or less 186%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (186%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (about 555%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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