GeForce 830M vs GeForce 8400 GS 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, which features clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 830M should perform much faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M should be much (about 217%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11264 (217%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 830M will be a lot (approximately 217%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5632 (217%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.