GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform a lot 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 is a lot (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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is the winner, though only just barely. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.