GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with GPU clock speed of 840 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1050 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (211%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (more or less 136%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19344 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB will be a little bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 816 (6%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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.