GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce 9400 GT 256MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (210%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 GTX should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (575%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX will be quite a bit (more or less 736%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (736%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GTX is much (about 527%) better at AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (527%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.