GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with GPU clock speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 320 Stream Processors, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R5 M255 should be 25% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 will be quite a bit (approximately 327%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (327%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (about 242%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5320 (242%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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