GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be quite a bit (about 110%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15744 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB is a bit (about 19%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2256 (19%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus 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 better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.