GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 100928 (234%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is quite a bit (about 85%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (about 85%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (85%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.