GeForce GT 320 vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 594 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 144 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 13 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 17920 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB will be just a bit (about 10%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1296 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (230%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.