GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (450%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G should be 2900% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 371200 (2900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be quite a bit (about 3536%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 155600 (3536%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 61800 (2809%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This number is worked out 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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