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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB features a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB 200 Watts
Difference: 50 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is a lot (more or less 199%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 59600 (199%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be much (more or less 113%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB 25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13600 (113%)

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 1GB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Amazon.com

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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 1GB Radeon HD 7950 3GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 January 2012
Code Name RV770 XT Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 89600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 40 112
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 956 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7950 3GB

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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