GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, which comes with a clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 850 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 96 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GT 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 91%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (91%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5200 (118%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.