| Article Index |
|---|
| Cheap Cards - GeForce 8400 vs. Radeon 2400 Series Comparison |
| Page 2 - Performance |
| Page 3 - 3DMark06 |
| Page 5 - Prey |
| Page 6 - Lost Planet (DirectX 10) |
| Page 7 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
The Results:
Our first cab off the rank is 3DMark06:
We can see in the graph above that the Radeon HD 2400XT is clearly in front in the 3DMark06 benchmark, and on closer analysis of the results we found the 2400XT and 8400GS very close on all the tests except for the High Dynamic Range (HDR)/Shader Model 3.0 (SM3.0) graphics tests, where the 2400XT was well ahead of the 8400GS, around 9fps compared to 5fps. Considering the difference in specs between the two cards, I was surprised the 8400GS did so well, and was actually considerably faster than the 2400Pro. It goes to show that clock speeds aren’t the be all and end all of processing power. Next we delve into the games with Quake 4!
{mospagebreak title=Page 4 - Quake 4}
Quake 4:
The Quake 4 tests were run at various resolutions in both normal mode and with 8x Anti-Aliasing enabled to really stress the cards capabilities.
The ‘normal’ tests show the GeForce 8400GS out in front in the low resolution test, but falling behind when the resolutions start to rise. This is likely due to the 8400’s lack of stream processors when compared to the 2400s, causing it to struggle with larger resolutions.
The 8x Anti-Aliasing test results displayed above show the 8400GS suffering a massive drop in performance compared to the normal test, down between (approx) 66-86% depending on the resolution, while both the 2400 cards only dropped around 50% across the board. Something is really choking the performance of the 8400GS in the higher resolution and Anti-Aliasing tests, and as the 8400 only has 40% of the stream processors as the 2400 cards, it’s the most likely culprit.
