GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs along with 72 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 is 196% faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (196%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (more or less 266%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37944 (266%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8944 (63%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.