GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB should be a bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.