GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, which comes with core speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 850 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		70 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 91%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		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 8800 GT 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.