GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be a small bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be a bit (about 15%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.