GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 116800 (270%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (more or less 394%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56144 (394%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 80%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11344 (80%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.