GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has a core clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 960 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 77 Watts (154%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6850 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (more or less 745%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (745%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be much (about 1027%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22600 (1027%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.