GeForce GT 440 1.5GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		56 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		43200 MB/sec
	Difference: 9792 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 440 1.5GB will be quite a bit (approximately 33%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		14256 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3568 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 440 1.5GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 440 1.5GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.