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Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 has a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which comes with core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870 188 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2 350 Watts
Difference: 162 Watts (86%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2 230400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 76800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a little bit (more or less 13%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 60000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 8000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870 27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2 24000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 3200 (13%)

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

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Radeon HD 5870

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 X2 Radeon HD 5870
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Aug 12, 2008 September 23, 2009
Code Name R700 Cypress XT
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 750 MHz (x2) 850 MHz
Memory Speed 3600 MHz (x2) 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 350 watts 188 watts
Bandwidth 230400 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 60000 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 24000 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) (x2) 1600(320x5)
Texture Mapping Units 40 (x2) 80
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors 956 million 2154 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 (PCIe bridge) PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.2

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the 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 HD 5870

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.

Comments

2 Responses to “Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5870”
HD4870x2, HD5770 Hawk & 8400GS LP - Page 4 says:

[...] Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon HD 5870 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare The 4870x2 Power la..... Free ups!! "Working on imperfect system that demands [...]

Adam says:

and what cpu/clock was used in this comparison? looks cpu bottle necked to me...

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