GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTS 450, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 902 MHz on this particular card. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 will be 351% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be much (about 469%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20656 (469%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10328 (469%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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