GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6450 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this card. It features 160 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		31 Watts
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) will be just a bit (approximately 14%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		5000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 600 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6450 (OEM) should be a small bit (about 14%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6450 (OEM)		2500 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 300 (14%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 amount of Render Output Units 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.