GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GT 320

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GT 320, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 540 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 790 MHz on this model. It features 72 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 320 should perform much faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 18880 (295%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 will be a lot (more or less 149%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7760 (149%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 is quite a bit (more or less 66%) better at AA than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1720 (66%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.