GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which features GPU clock speed of 730 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB should perform much faster than the Radeon R7 240 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 57216 (199%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is quite a bit (more or less 358%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52216 (358%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27568 (472%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.