GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 should be a lot (approximately 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be much (approximately 143%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 240 GDDR5		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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 reach the maximum fill rate.