GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 62784 (145%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (about 50%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7120 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be a lot (more or less 50%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7120 (50%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.