GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (346%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 132800 (307%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (about 493%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70224 (493%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13904 (98%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.