GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be 567% faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 244800 (567%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (about 663%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94544 (663%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12944 (91%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.