HD2400Pro and 8400GS versus X1600Pro and 7300GT
Author:
Date: 15.08.2007
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We decided not to overclock HD2400Pro and 8400GS. Of course, it is quite often that low-end video cards offer a good overclocking capability and upon raising the frequencies they are able showing results at the level of some middle-end representatives. However, in our case the overclocking to a high degree of probability will be restricted by the very "narrow" memory bus of 64-bit wide. The below table presents comparative specifications for HD2400Pro and 8400GS as well as their immediate "competitors" of the previous generation. The last line of the table shows the approximate price of the products on the moment of writing the article. In fact, we were choosing similar "rivals" based just on the price level. The video card 8500GT has been brought into the table deliberately, although its results are not covered in this test. But we'll talk about that a bit later.
| Video Card |
7300GT |
X1600Pro |
HD2400Pro |
8400GS |
8500GT |
| Core |
G73 |
RV530 |
RV610 |
G86 |
G86 |
| Process technology |
90 nm |
90 nm |
65 nm |
80 nm |
80 nm |
| Pixel pipelines |
8 |
12 |
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| Vertex pipelines |
4 |
5 |
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| Universal processors |
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40 |
16 |
16 |
| DirectX |
9.0c |
9.0c |
10 |
10 |
10 |
| Texture units |
8 |
4 |
4 |
8 |
8 |
| ROP units |
8 |
4 |
4 |
8 |
8 |
| Chip/memory frequency, MHz |
350/667 |
500/780 |
525/800 |
460/800 |
460/800 |
| Memory bus |
128 Bit |
128 Bit |
64 Bit |
64 Bit |
128 Bit |
| Price, $ |
55-60 |
65-70 |
�50 |
50-60 |
75-80 |
The results for the novelties are highlighted in lighter tints, whereas the results for the "oldies" - in darker tints.
Test configuration
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Bus
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PCI-Express
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CPU
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MB
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Memory
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OS
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WinXP + SP2 + DirectX 9.0c
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PSU
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Thermaltake ToughPower 750 W
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We ran the tests using the ForceWare 162.18 and Catalyst 7.7 drivers.
According to 3DMark, the most powerful of the products is Radeon X1600Pro. Which is logical in fact. And this card is the most expensive (hereinafter, 8500GT does not count). HD2400Pro is a real failure at 3DMark’03. Perhaps the lack of optimizations for the old "marks meter" makes itself felt, or the texture units do not run efficiently enough. On the other hand, at 3DMark’05 which has always given preference to ATI/AMD video cards, the parity with 8400GS is restored and fails already at 7300GT. In the latest version of 3DMark, the three video cards show approximately the same results and only X1600Pro stands out in a proud leadership.
At Oblivion, HD2400Pro lags behind its immediate rival 8400GS and from the other participants. This could be attributed to the narrow memory bus, but 8400GS easily leaves 7300GT behind, and the 64-bit memory bus is not a hindrance.
At Need for Speed Carbon, HD2400Pro gets its own back leaving 8400GS behind. In fact, this game has always been favorable to AMD adapters.
At Serious Sam II, the NVIDIA products show very close results, whereas AMD products of different generations are demonstrating an impressive deviation to both sides.
At Quake 4, it is logical that NVIDIA adapters take a lead (within one generation). As regards the struggle between "oldies" and "newbies", the latter win.
A similar picture is at Prey, except that the gap between HD2400Pro and 8400GS is now somehow smaller.
At F.E.A.R., HD2400Pro is again lags well behind, with 8400GS slightly lagging behind 7300GT.
Memory bus efficiency of 8400GS and 8500GT
Now a few words on why we needed to mention the specifications of 8500GT in the comparative table, although this card did not take part in the tests. The thing is, 8400GS and 8500GT offer identical specifications, except the memory bus width. If you remember, quite recently we showed that for middle-end cards the transition from 128-bit to 256-bit memory bus does not add much performance. This time we got an analog of 7600GT with the 256-bit memory bus artificially, and we were not able to get a full analogy. This time there was a more favorable occasion and we couldn't pass by. In fact, the question was posed like that – if the performance boost upon the the increase of memory capacity is not substantial, maybe we won't lose much upon cutting down the memory bus? Let's see. We'll be verifying that following the same method. We fix the GPU speed and, while changing the video memory frequency, we build a graph of FPS produced in Quake 4 at 1024?768 No AA/AF. The below figure brings in four graphs. The dark lines correspond to the nominal GPU frequencies, the brighter lines – to those upon overclocking the GPU from nominal 460 MHz to 650 MHz. The bullet points stand for the values produced at nominal speeds.
 Note the dark blue and dark green lines. They were produced for 8400GS and 8500GT, respectively, at the nominal GPU speed equal to 460 MHz. If the memory frequency is very small, the gap in results is quite substantial but it goes down as the video memory frequency goes up. At the same time, at the nominal speeds the 8500GT surpasses 8400GS by merely 26% as can be seen from the figures in the bottom part of the graph, where the gap in performance between these cards in percentage is shown.
We can also see from the graphs that as the video memory frequencies go up the imaginary tangents to the lines of results do not pass through the point of origin, which means the performance is bounded by not only the video memory bandwidth. That is, on raising the GPU frequency we can rightfully expect the increase of results for even 8400GS. The lines of of the graph having lighter tints are demonstrating just that. Remarkably, upon overclocking 8400GS to 650/900(DDR) MHz its performance becomes equal to the nominal 8500GT. Of course, if we overclock 8500GT to the same frequencies, it will still be unattainable and the gap will remain almost the same (in percentage).
Final Words
So, what have today's tests shown? The low-end novelties which offer a memory bus of merely 64-bit are demonstrating performance on par with 128-bit analogs of the previous generation. In terms of continuity of FPS level, the best performer is the NVIDIA product, while HD2400Pro sometimes demonstrated deep gaps. On the other hand, HD2400Pro is much cheaper, and at the absolute performance of about 10 FPS the scatter in tens of percents will not make your gameplay comfortable. Hence, if you already have a low-end video card, perhaps it doesn't make sense hastily replace it with a novelty that supports DirectX 10 - you are unlikely to win in terms of performance. If you are about to buy an inexpensive video card with support for the most recent "trendy" features, then 8400GS andHD2400Pro would prove to be quite a choice of dignity. The advantage of 8400GS is in a bit higher performance on average, whereas HD2400Pro stands out with its modest power consumption and offers an integrated video decoder (including HD standards), which makes it an ideal candidates for the digital home media center. NVIDIA video cards also offer hardware decoding of HD content, although not in the extent as AMD products are. Support for the PureVideo HD by NVIDIA is currently declared for Windows Vista only.
Anyway, comparison of the hardware decoding efficiency for the video stream by the graphic processor is a separate big topic which we'll be reviewing in the forthcoming materials.
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