GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a speed of 993 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 20352 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be much (more or less 75%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10744 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB will be a lot (more or less 43%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (43%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.