GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 110%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15744 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2256 (19%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.