GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 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 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (164%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (253%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be a lot (more or less 405%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (405%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is quite a bit (approximately 573%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25200 (573%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.