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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 5550

Intro

The GeForce 9400 GT 256MB has core 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.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5550, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 550 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 400 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5550 will be quite a bit (approximately 100%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 4400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 4400 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5550 is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5550 4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB 2200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2200 (100%)

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

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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 9400 GT 256MB Radeon HD 5550
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year August 2008 February 9, 2010
Code Name G96a Redwood LE
Memory 256 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 550 MHz 550 MHz
Memory Speed 800 MHz 800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 50 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 12800 MB/sec 12800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 4400 Mtexels/sec 8800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 2200 Mpixels/sec 4400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 16 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 8 16
Render Output Units 4 8
Bus Type GDDR2 DDR2
Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 40 nm
Transistors 314 million 627 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0, PCI PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 5550

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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