GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GTS 450

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450, which has a core clock speed of 783 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 902 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 192 SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (165%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 450 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 51328 (802%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 is a lot (approximately 382%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19856 (382%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9928 (382%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed in a second.

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