GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 440 1.5GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 9 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be 93% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 20800 (93%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is a lot (approximately 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5616 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.