GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 54 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 20352 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be a lot (approximately 75%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10744 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB should be quite a bit (approximately 43%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one 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 - 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.