GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (1150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 1500%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66000 (1500%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (approximately 1064%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23400 (1064%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.