GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		84 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB will be quite a bit (approximately 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12144 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB is quite a bit (approximately 116%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GSO 1.5GB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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