GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 85696 (670%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti is quite a bit (approximately 555%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (more or less 882%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19400 (882%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.