GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which has core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 238 Watts (425%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5970 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 212800 (493%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 1527%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 217744 (1527%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (about 551%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 78544 (551%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 reach the max fill rate.