GeForce GT 440 3GB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1026 MHz on this specific model. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		56 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (107%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be 128% faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 55296 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is a lot (more or less 102%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14544 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7344 (52%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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