GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 240 GDDR5

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 550 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 850 MHz on this specific card. It features 96 SPUs along with 32 TAUs 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 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should be 6% faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 in general, because of its greater data rate. (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 much (about 91%) faster with regards to 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 a better choice, 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.