GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7970, which features core clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be much (more or less 731%) better at anisotropic 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

The Radeon HD 7970 will be much (about 108%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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 megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.