Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1440(288x5) Stream Processors, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		44 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		20 FPS
	Difference: 24 FPS (120%)

Fallout 3

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		76 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		51 FPS
	Difference: 25 FPS (49%)

Left4Dead

Settings:	Very High Quality
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		100 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		72 FPS
	Difference: 28 FPS (39%)

Left4Dead 2

Settings:	Very High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		104 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		77 FPS
	Difference: 27 FPS (35%)

Mass Effect 2

Settings:	Maximum Quality
AA:	none
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		124 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		96 FPS
	Difference: 28 FPS (29%)

Supreme Commander 2

Settings:	High
AA:	8x
AF:	16x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 5850		78 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		55 FPS
	Difference: 23 FPS (42%)

Tom Clancy's Endwar

Settings:	High Quality
AA:	4x
AF:	8x
Resolution:	1920x1200
Test Machine:	Tom's Hardware Test Machine (Source)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30 FPS
Radeon HD 5850		30 FPS
	Difference: 0 FPS (0%)

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Radeon HD 5850 wins

(Based entirely on the benchmarks listed above)

When combining all game benchmark scores on this page together, the Radeon HD 5850 wins overall, by 155 FPS. Please note that we do not have the results of every benchmark ever done for these cards, so the results may differ wildly in different games.

Radeon HD 5850		556 FPS
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		401 FPS
	Difference: 155 FPS (39%)

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 1 Watts (1%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5850 should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (approximately 74%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (93%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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