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Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280 250 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2 350 Watts
Difference: 100 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 4870 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280 240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
Difference: 9600 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (approximately 74%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280 104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 44496 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280 29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 5856 (24%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280

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 X2 Radeon R9 280
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Aug 12, 2008 March 2014
Code Name R700 Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 3072 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz (x2) 933 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 350 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 230400 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 60000 Mtexels/sec 104496 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24000 Mpixels/sec 29856 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 112
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 384-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 956 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280

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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