GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon HD 5450

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5450, which features a GPU core clock speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5450		19 Watts
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (163%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 will be just a bit (about 18%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		5200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 800 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5450 will be a small bit (more or less 18%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5450		2600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (18%)

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 transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.