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Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon HD 4890 2GB

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB comes with a GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory is set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, which features clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 975 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB 150 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB 190 Watts
Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB 124800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 115200 MB/sec
Difference: 9600 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 33%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 2GB is much (approximately 33%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 2GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 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 512MB

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 4890 2GB

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 512MB Radeon HD 4890 2GB
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 Apr 2, 2009
Code Name RV770 XT RV790 XT
Memory 512 MB 2048 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 1000 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 3900 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 190 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 124800 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 40000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 16000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 40 40
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 55 nm
Transistors 956 million 959 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4890 2GB

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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