GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTX 950M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 950M, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 914 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 950M is 150% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (more or less 731%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32160 (731%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is much (approximately 565%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12424 (565%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.