GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 101 Watts (202%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6870 should be 950% quicker than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (950%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (approximately 1045%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46000 (1045%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26600 (1209%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.