GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 Stream Processors, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (approximately 745%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (745%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (about 1027%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22600 (1027%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.