GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be 33% faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be a little bit (about 15%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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.