GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 975 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (239%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (189%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB will be a lot (about 181%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25744 (181%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 1GB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1744 (12%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.