GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a lot (approximately 110%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15744 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is just a bit (about 19%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2256 (19%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.