GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which features a clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 132800 (307%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 493%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70224 (493%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (about 98%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13904 (98%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.