GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6970, which has a core clock speed of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, 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 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 should be a lot (about 1820%) better at texture 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.