GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has core speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 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 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163200 (1275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is much (more or less 1820%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80080 (1820%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 1180%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25960 (1180%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.