GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which has a clock frequency of 594 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 144 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 141 Watts (252%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 will be 196% quicker than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (196%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (about 439%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62544 (439%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4944 (35%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported 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 type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.