GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 594 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should be 13% quicker than the GeForce GT 230 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be much (more or less 62%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5456 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9856 (224%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.