GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5970, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 254 Watts (635%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 will be 3900% quicker than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (3900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (approximately 4362%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 226800 (4362%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 90200 (3469%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.