GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 594 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 144 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 24 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 30400 (238%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB should be a lot (more or less 65%) better at AF than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM). (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5616 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (230%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.