GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs GeForce GT 220 GDDR3

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, which comes with GPU core speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 1012 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 48 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (45%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25984 (406%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 will be quite a bit (about 92%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (92%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.