GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which comes with core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 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 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be 112% faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (112%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be quite a bit (about 70%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be much (about 173%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.