GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 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 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 280 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (324%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 241%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (241%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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