GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 594 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		84 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB is quite a bit (more or less 85%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (85%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.