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Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790 85 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 150 Watts
Difference: 65 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB 115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790 96000 MB/sec
Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is quite a bit (about 87%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790 56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 26000 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7790 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790 16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 2GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 4000 (33%)

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 7790

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 7790
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 March 2013
Code Name RV770 XT Bonaire XT
Memory 2048 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 85 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 96000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 56000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 16000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 896
Texture Mapping Units 40 56
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 956 million 2080 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 7790

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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