GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 112% faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be much (approximately 70%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (173%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, 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 can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.