GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 224 Watts (320%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (371%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (more or less 1218%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 214400 (1218%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 88400 (2009%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.