GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTS 450 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 783 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 902 MHz on this specific card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be 351% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44928 (351%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB will be much (about 469%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20656 (469%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could 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 colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.