GeForce GT 440 3GB vs GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, which makes use of a 55 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 999 MHz on this particular card. It features 216 SPUs as well as 72 TAUs and 28 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (205%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 68688 (159%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm will be a lot (about 191%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27216 (191%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1872 (13%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.