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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The GeForce 9400 GT 256MB makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The GDDR2 memory runs at a speed of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 is 1150% quicker than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 1500%) more effective at 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, by a large margin. (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

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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9400 GT 256MB Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year August 2008 December 2010
Code Name G96a Cayman Pro
Memory 256 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 550 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 50 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 4400 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 2200 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 1408
Texture Mapping Units 8 88
Render Output Units 4 32
Bus Type GDDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 314 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0, PCI PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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