GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 594 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GT 512MB is much (approximately 136%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19344 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be quite a bit (more or less 49%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4656 (49%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.