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Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which features a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a little bit (more or less 12%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 3600 (12%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a small bit (about 12%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 1440 (12%)

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

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Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4870 2GB Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 April 2011
Code Name RV770 XT Barts LE
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 840 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 800
Texture Mapping Units 40 40
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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