GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (3%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB is much (about 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be quite a bit (more or less 143%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6288 (143%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.