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

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 65%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be much (approximately 143%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.