GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which comes with a clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 294 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 187200 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 321%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45744 (321%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much (about 68%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9744 (68%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.