GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7970, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 511% faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 220800 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (about 731%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104144 (731%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is superior to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15344 (108%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.