GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5970, which features core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (488%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 243200 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 5173%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 227600 (5173%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 90600 (4118%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.