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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

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

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X 300 Watts
Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 204800 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (about 369%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 110800 (369%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 327%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 39200 (327%)

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

Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

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 R9 290X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 October 2013
Code Name RV770 XT Hawaii XT
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory 1024 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 800 MHz
Shader Speed N/A MHz (N/A) MHz
Memory Speed 900 MHz (3600 MHz effective) 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 2816
Texture Mapping Units 40 176
Render Output Units 16 64
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 512-bit
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 300 watts
Shader Model 4.1 5.0
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 140800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 51200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

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