GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB will be 134% quicker than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 72704 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (approximately 184%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (184%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a lot (approximately 355%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (355%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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