GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which features GPU clock speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 Stream Processors, 20 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R5 M230, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be a lot (about 255%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (255%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be quite a bit (approximately 42%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 920 (42%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per 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 calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.