GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 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 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (67%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be a little bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1856 (15%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.