GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be 23% faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9792 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB is quite a bit (about 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3568 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 3GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3568 (33%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.