GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9152 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 42%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (127%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.