GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a lot (about 50%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (500%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.