GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 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 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (239%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (189%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 181%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25744 (181%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be just a bit (about 12%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1744 (12%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.