GeForce 930M vs GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, which features clock speeds of 550 MHz on the GPU, and 400 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR2 RAM. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 930M should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M will be quite a bit (about 406%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17872 (406%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 930M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5224 (237%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.