GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 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 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9792 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is a lot (more or less 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3568 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3568 (33%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.