GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6970		3470 points
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		840 points
	Difference: 2630 (313%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 307% faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 132800 (307%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (about 493%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70224 (493%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 98%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13904 (98%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.