GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units 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 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (257%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 116800 (270%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit (more or less 394%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56144 (394%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 80%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 440 3GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11344 (80%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.