GeForce GT 440 3GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6790, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this card. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units 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 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (168%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 440 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 91200 (211%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (approximately 136%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 440 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19344 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 3GB should be a bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 3GB		14256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 816 (6%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.