GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 470, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 607 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 837 MHz on this card. It features 448 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is quite a bit (approximately 554%) faster with regards to AF 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is a better choice, and very much so. (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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.