GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which comes with clock speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 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
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		90 Watts
	Difference: 34 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 119%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		31200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16944 (119%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3856 (37%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.