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Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X 75 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 150 Watts
Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB 115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X 88000 MB/sec
Difference: 27200 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (more or less 68%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X 50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20400 (68%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X 14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2400 (20%)

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

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M280X

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 1GB Radeon R9 M280X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Jun 25, 2008 Feb 9 2015
Code Name RV770 XT Saturn XT
Memory 1024 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz 900 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz 5500 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 150 watts 75 watts
Bandwidth 115200 MB/sec 88000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 30000 Mtexels/sec 50400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12000 Mpixels/sec 14400 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 (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M280X

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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