GeForce 9600 GT 512MB vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which features core speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		95 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GT 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		20800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6544 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB is a lot (about 37%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9600 GT 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 512MB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3856 (37%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.