GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which has core speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		84 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should be much faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 27200 (170%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512 is much (approximately 85%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (85%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO ASUS 512		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7656 (116%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.