GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 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 R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should perform much 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 (approximately 633%) faster with regards to texture 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, by a large margin. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.