GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 51584 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be a lot (approximately 21%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16976 (386%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.