GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1026 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 192 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (132%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is 670% quicker than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 85696 (670%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be much (about 555%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (555%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be much (more or less 882%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19400 (882%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.