GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 196800 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (more or less 633%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90240 (633%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (more or less 109%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (109%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.