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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

The GeForce 9400 GT 256MB comes with a core clock speed of 550 MHz and a GDDR2 memory speed of 400 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It is made up of 16 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 902 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 50 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB 106 Watts
Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB 57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 12800 MB/sec
Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 469%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB 25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 4400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20656 (469%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB 12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 2200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 10328 (469%)

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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GeForce GTS 450 1GB

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 GeForce GTS 450 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia nVidia
Year August 2008 September 2010
Code Name G96a GF106
Memory 256 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 550 MHz 783 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 3608 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 50 watts 106 watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 57728 MB/sec
Texel Rate 4400 Mtexels/sec 25056 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 2200 Mpixels/sec 12528 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 192
Texture Mapping Units 8 32
Render Output Units 4 16
Bus Type GDDR2 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 314 million 1170 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

GeForce GTS 450 1GB

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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