PNY GeForce 8400 GS review

PNY's GeForce 8400 GS uses one of Nvidia's entry-level DirectX 10 graphics chips.

This uses stream processors, which do different jobs depending on the graphical environment it's trying to generate. For indoor scenes, most of the stream processors can be set as shaders to provide detail, while in outdoor scenes they can draw vertices to create a lot of objects.

Nvidia's high-end 8800GTS chip has 96 stream processors, but the 8400 GS has just 16. These run at 900MHz, while the core runs at just 450MHz. This isn't the only limitation, either: the card has just 256MB of DDR2 RAM, while high-end cards use DDR3. What's more, Nvidia has used a 64-bit memory interface, which drastically reduces the memory's bandwidth and slows graphics processing.

The test results were slow. None of our games was playable at our default resolution of 1,280x1,024 with 4x AA and 8x anisotropic filtering. With no anti-aliasing and a resolution of 1,024x768, the card managed a frame rate of 27.2fps in Prey. Call of Duty 2 still ran at a very poor 16.8fps, so this card isn't much good for anything but the least demanding games.

In its favour, it is tiny and occupies only the length of a PCI-E x16 slot, so it fits almost any case. Its single fan isn't particularly loud, and it has an HDCP-compliant DVI output and a VGA output, so you could use it in a media centre.

However, Sapphire's HD 2400 XT Silent (Shopper October 2007) has similar games performance, an HDMI output and is passively cooled, so it's silent. It's the same price, too, and would be our choice for a media centre. If you want to play games, Sapphire's X1950 Pro costs £50 more, but will cope with any modern game.

Author: David Ludlow