GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5830 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (196%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a lot (about 214%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30544 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1456 (11%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.