GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 550 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR2 memory set to run at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 16 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra will be 710% quicker than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 90880 (710%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra should be much (more or less 790%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34768 (790%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is a lot (about 568%) better at AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12488 (568%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This number is calculated 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.