GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which has a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is 17% faster than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
	Difference: 9152 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be quite a bit (about 42%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is superior to the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (127%)

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. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.