GeForce GT 315 vs GeForce GT 440 3GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 440 3GB, which comes with clock speeds of 594 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 144 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
	Difference: 4 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 440 3GB should be 71% faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 17920 (71%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB is much (about 43%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (43%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9256 (185%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.