GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 should be 3% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 is much (approximately 65%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated 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 processed per second.

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