GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4830 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4830 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 575 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 640(128x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, 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 4830 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4830 512MB will be 33% faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4830 512MB will be much (about 29%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4830 512MB		18400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4144 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4830 512MB		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (55%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.