GeForce 8800 Ultra vs GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 550 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR2 RAM running at 400 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 16 Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 121 Watts (242%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is 710% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 90880 (710%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is much (about 790%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34768 (790%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra will be quite a bit (approximately 568%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12488 (568%)

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 (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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.