GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 240, which has core clock speeds of 730 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is a lot (about 161%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9000 (161%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be a lot (more or less 109%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (109%)

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 within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.