GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features core speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (164%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT is a lot (about 405%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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