GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 470, which features GPU clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 837 MHz through a 320-bit bus. It also is made up of 448 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 40 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (438%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 127520 (1993%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be a lot (about 554%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28792 (554%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be much (approximately 834%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21680 (834%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.