GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units 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 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 83904 (194%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (more or less 251%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35744 (251%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (about 40%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5744 (40%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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