GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which has core clock speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (575%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB will be much (about 174%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9056 (174%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is superior to the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11656 (448%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.